


Broken Parts

by facade



Series: The Shards of Us [2]
Category: Football RPF
Genre: Adultery, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Attempted Murder, Behavioural Health Facility, Delusions, Discussion of Abortion, F/M, Hallucinations, Implied/Referenced Abortion, Infidelity, M/M, Medicinal Drug Use, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Narcissism, Originally Posted: 2013-09-11, Psychosis, Religion, Religious References, Sociopathic Tendancies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-02
Updated: 2015-03-04
Packaged: 2018-02-27 22:00:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 27,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2708276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/facade/pseuds/facade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s a place that I know of, it's not far from here<br/>where the canvas falls blank; everything starts fresh, begins anew<br/>This black and white world, it is there that it becomes colored again<br/>It is a place where wounds heal, a place where you rediscover – you  </p><p>It is a place where memories, once chains, turn to the fuel that drives you<br/>Oh yes, there is a place that I know of, it's not far from here<br/>A place where our history is nothing more than an empty shadow,<br/>A place where the skies above and the roads ahead are only clear.</p><p> <strong><em>(This work is not a part of a series of independent fictions. Part 2 of Break Me)</em></strong></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Pull Me Out of Myself

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Break Me](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1839811) by [facade](https://archiveofourown.org/users/facade/pseuds/facade). 



> Holy shit. I just realized I started this over a year ago. Has it really been so long?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't even know why I tell you guys that I'm still editing things as I'm always editing things. It's never ending.

_Enlighten me, little blue bird:_

_Are you in concert all the time?_

_What happens to your melody_

_When the sun fails to shine?_

_Where will you flutter off to_

_When you suffer a broken wing?_

_I invite you in with open arms_

_And invite all of the baggage you bring._

* * *

Kaka groaned as he stared up at the bright light hanging high above him, thinking of everywhere else in the world he’d rather be than lying here in this unbelievably uncomfortable bed. He gently smoothed out the wrinkles of his white gown and shook his head in deliberation, eventually deciding that he preferred wearing the white of Madrid on the bench over this nonsense. Sure, he only had to wear this monstrosity throughout the physical exam but it still made him feel as if he was some kind of nut job.... The tracking bracelet they had tightly wrapped around his ankle didn’t make him feel any better either; apparently, if you step out of the door with this thing on, everyone loses their damned mind. Lesson learned. Who would’ve thought that this, an ankle bracelet and a thin white gown, was the consequence of a few too many? A taste too many and suddenly you find yourself on lock down, surrounded by junkies and lunatics. Part of him wished he would’ve taken his last shot a little slower, wished that he had savored the bitter taste of it a moment longer… He felt a cold sweat forming on his brow and something, something of an itch on his collarbone as he became antsy and unsettled in the small room. A small piece of him was still waiting, hoping for cameras to pop up while announcing that this was all some sort of sick media hoax. That Liza wasn’t real. That he didn’t even drink. That Cristiano hadn’t, had never…

Suffocated. He felt suffocated and the walls, the walls seemed to be coming in on him and the air, the air seemed to be too thick for him to breathe. No. He had to leave, he had to get out of here. He threw the door of the exam room open and cautiously glanced out into the lobby of the floor below, watching as two, three would come in only to leave moments later with one less. He watched in confusion as some man started to make a scene on the floor below, seemingly accusing a man that had just walked in of stealing something of his. As he listened closer, made out some of the words: a sheet of toilet paper had allegedly been stolen from him by a man that had just entered the building. (Fantastic. I think I know why you are being admitted here. God, I am not, no, I’m sure I’ll qualify for the outpatient program if those are the kinds of people that are going in). Kaka chuckled at the scene below for a few more moments before shaking his head in admonishment of the man. (I will say or do whatever the hell they want me to do. Anything. Just let me out of here. I cannot be in here with people like that. I will never, never survive). He had already tried pulling the celebrity card in a vain attempt to bribe the hospital into a non-committal treatment plan; it would have worked, easily, had Real Madrid C.F. not taken a personal (and business) interest in his alleged ‘mental affliction’, threatening a court order in lieu of his voluntary enrollment… That’s why he was here. Court order.  

Kaka stared at the security guards carrying the toilet paper man off for a few moments longer until someone else caught his eye. He furrowed his brow in disbelief as he saw two familiar faces waltz into the lobby, watching as they glanced around, seemingly trying to figure out where they needed to go. If he was being completely honest with himself, he wasn’t at all surprised to see Sergio within the confines of this place but, Mesut? He was sure he seemed to fit in, seemed as if he belonged here as he frantically waved in an attempt to catch the attention of the German and the Spaniard. After a few moments of his idiotic waving, he released a sigh of relief as he finally caught the attention of the round eyes of the young German. (Leave it to those avatar eyes to see anything and everything).

“What is this, my friend?” Mesut asked playfully as he made his way up the stairs, Sergio more than a few yards behind him seeming to take in every detail of the place. “Is there some sort of session going on here or…? I just thought I’d never you in this place, Ricky.” The German put the last few steps of the stairwell beneath him and jogged the last, small stretch of tiles that separated him from the Brasilian. He pulled the other man in for a hug, squeezed him as tightly as he could and only pulled away enough to see Kaka’s face. “Did you go crazy, my friend?” He laughed as he saw Ricky roll his eyes and squeezed his fellow attacker’s shoulder in a reassuring manner before he allowed the other to fall back into the door way of the examination room. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of, my friend. There’s no such thing as sanity anymore. We lost that long ago, no?” The German offered Kaka his best full-faced grin, widening his eyes in a comically large manner, and wiggled his eyebrows.

Ricky couldn’t silence the laughter that was forming at the back of his throat as he watched Mesut intentionally bulge his eyes further out. He tried to look away from the younger man, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of being ‘the one’ to put a smile on his face in spite of their surroundings. It was a failed attempt as he burst out in laughter, hand falling to Mesut’s shoulder for support as he released the everything and nothing that had been trapped within him. “Mes, just… Just stop that, man. You’re starting to scare the hell out of me and, if you’re not careful, you’ll be the one in the padded room.” He caught his breath as the German allowed his face to revert back to a normal state and sighed. “I’m just here because… Apparently, they think that I’ve become some kind of an alcoholic. So much shit… Maybe they’re the ones who’ve lost their sanity.”

“Well, you can’t be an alcoholic,” Mesut stated simply as he started watching random people on the floor below, seeing, not people, but blurs of life and nothing more. “I mean, the difference between an alcoholic and a drunk is that one acknowledges their problem, no? You’re just a drunk…” Mesut thought aloud, though, as soon as his words reached his own ears he quickly added, “That is, if you truly have a drinking problem but you don’t. You don’t.”  He tried to hide the panic from his momentary lapse in judgment and searched for a distraction; he heard Sergio’s steps coming closer and could easily hear the sigh of the Sevillan. Perfect. “Either way, you’ll be in good company, amongst friends whether they’re right or wrong in their opinion, isn’t that right, Sergio?”

Sergio was still sporting his aviators on the brim of his nose and he had his hands shoved deeply within the pockets of his dark denim jeans; he thought that if he didn’t see the treatment facility properly then this place wouldn’t materialize into something real and tangible for him, that it would remain a topic of discussion, an option and nothing more… That if he didn’t touch any of its contents it wouldn’t contaminate him with… whatever it was the people did here. He didn’t have the energy to lift his eyes from the floor, he lacked the willpower to do a lot of things as he found himself hindered by embarrassment, fear. After a few moments of just standing there, Mesut and Ricky’s eyes on him waiting for something, anything, he removed his hands from his pockets and started fidgeting nervously with the zipper of his fitted, black hoodie. “Amongst friends,” he repeated weakly as he attempted to offer Ricky a smile, though the muscles within his face had a difficult time falling in line with his intent. 

It was the worst attempt at a smile Ricky had ever seen but that Sergio had tried, for him, warmed his heart a little more. (And I thought I didn’t want to be here.) “Don’t worry, Sergio. It’s not like I wanted to be here either,” Kaka tried as he searched for Sergio’s eyes, a soft smile playing on his features and momentarily brightening his otherwise reddened eyes.

“No, but I… I need to be here. For him.” Sergio whispered back, receiving a smile of understanding from the German, one of sympathy, pity from the Brasilian. He hated being pitied, he didn’t deserve to be felt sorry for but Ricky… Ricky didn’t understand that. Could never understand that. “Where do I go to, you know, get this shit started?” The Sevillan glanced around the area as he asked Ricky for instructions, apprehensively searching for a sign to give him direction of some sort. Anything that would tell him which way he needed to go, which… He stopped as he caught sight of Iker crossing the hall with a nurse at his side, his breath hitching as the pain of what he had indirectly done to the keeper surged back through him in full force.

Ricky wasn’t sure of what it was that had caught Sergio’s attention but, as soon as he had it back, he gave the defender directions to the admissions desk and watched as the Spaniard grew smaller and smaller. He waited until Sergio had disappeared completely from view before allowing his attentions to fall back on Mesut. “…and you, Mes? You’re here because…?”

Mesut raised his eyebrows and shook his head, shrugging his shoulders as he spoke. “Well, I was just giving Sergio a ride. Making sure he actually came and got here in one piece but… I think I’m going to be admitting myself as ‘severely depressed with suicidal thoughts’.” The German was casual in his answer, nodding his head in self-approval as he found the Brasilian’s eyes filled with confusion. “I’ve been thinking about it for a little bit now. It just feels right, like what needs to be done.”

“What? Suicide?” Kaka asked as the confusion left his eyes and filled his entire body. Mesut had never struck him as depressed; he would actually put Mesut on the opposing end of the spectrum as depression as the man barely knew how to frown for more than a few seconds. He never lingered in his feelings, was always smiling, had never showed a desire to want to kill himself but… Depression was a silent killer, that it had captured and was now gnawing at someone as wonderful as Mesut made his heart ache.  “Why didn’t you ever tell anyone? We would have helped you.”

 Mesut scrunched his face at the words and quickly held up his hands. “No. I mean, that’s fantastic to hear, my friend, but I don’t want to take my own life. It isn’t mine to take… I’ve just been thinking of admitting myself for a while now. I thought really hard on it.”

Just when he thought Mesut couldn’t get anymore… Mesut-like. Ricky shot the German a puzzled expression and scratched at his temples, shaking his head incredulously at the other man. While he was sitting here, thinking of ways to get out, to avoid admittance, Mesut was plotting ways to get in. “Why the hell would you want to be in here, Mes? Do you realize how insane that…? Well, insanity is what you’re going for but why? Why would you want to imprison yourself like this?”

Mesut allowed his eyes to fall beyond the man standing before him, set his sights all the way down to the end of the same hallway that Sergio had disappeared into only moments earlier, and, after a few moments, looked back at Kaka with a set of eyes that said it all. “Sergio’s here for a possible ‘mental illness’. It’s some pretty heavy shit and I just... He can’t go through this alone, Ricky. He’s my friend, your friend. I think a place like this will probably make him worse, make him feel more alone than he already does. He doesn’t have to be alone though, Ricky... Liza said that this would be beneficial for him but I’m just not so sure yet...” Mesut looked at Kaka for a moment and scowled as he realized that Ricky was simply sticking his head out from behind the door. Sure, he had just hugged him but the Brasilian must have retreated back into the room for the most part, after. “What the fuck are you doing in here, my friend?” Mesut asked as he pushed the door open further, unveiling the bland gown Kaka had been sporting behind it. “Are you, are you wearing…? Is that a dress?” The German covered his mouth to refrain from laughing as loudly as he felt he needed to as he watched Kaka spin and curtsy in the dress-like gown. “You look very lovely, my friend. Very lovely.”

The number eight smiled, knowing that he looked simply ridiculous, and spun a few more times, laughing as the gown swished around his calves. “They were supposed to be administering my physical. I think they may have forgotten about me, though. Who can be sure? Do you like my ankle bracelet, Mes? It’s temporary but I think it’s a good look for me. Don’t you?”

Mesut was laughing so hard he was certain he had forgotten how to breathe. “That’s some pretty risqué jewelry you’re sporting there, madam,” the German giggled out as he staggered back up to his feet, extending a hand towards Ricky as he did so. “You’re here for a physical, Ricky… So let’s get physical. Dance with me, madam,” Mesut chuckled out as he sarcastically bowed before Ricky. He felt light, relieved that he was able to make Ricky smile in spite of everything – their environment, why Ricky was here, what Cris had… Yes. This was why he needed to be here. His smile deepened as he watched Kaka fan his face with his hand, batting his eyelids at rapid rates as he placed his hand gingerly into that of the German’s. “Shall we?”

Ricky soon learned that Mesut was an awful dancer, so awful that it was still entertaining to anyone that bothered to look in their general direction. “Careful, Mesut,” Kaka laughed out as Mesut spun him into the wall of the exam room, “your depression is being prominently displayed. You’ll be lucky to get out of this area without the aid of a strait jacket,” Ricky chuckled out sarcastically as he realized that they had caught the eyes of some of the staff.

They laughed and danced, carried on like they were the only people in the world for several moments before calling it quits. Mesut was addicted to making his friend genuinely laugh, well aware of the turmoil that must have been brewing within Ricky’s soul since he and Cristiano had been… Either way, he just wanted to remind the Brasilian of the better emotions that existed outside of the void he must have been living in to have drown himself in alcohol, no matter the cost. He had noticed the eyes of the staff and had muttered that he had given them reason to commit him into Ricky’s ear as the specialists arrived to complete Ricky’s physical exam. “See you on the other side, my friend.”

* * *

> He had a gray beard and his face, his face was wrinkled and wise. His lips were thin and cracked, his hands were shaky, but his voice was firm and authoritative. There was warmth about him, something that pulled me in to him, something about him that seemed so, so familiar to me... I had never seen him before though he claimed to have known you, spoke of you as if he had known you your whole life. He quoted you on ‘shit’ and he talked a bit about us. I didn’t think anyone knew about us, we were, we were one night. One night but everything was clear, made sense. But it was one night so how he could possibly, how he... How did you know him? He offered to take me to you, said that you wouldn’t be happy about it but that it was something, something he could do for me. He warned me, said you wouldn’t approve but still I… He made you sound as if you were so close to me, as if I could touch you again if I just reached a little further.
> 
> It is for no one else that I would apologize for what I’ve done, what I must have done… It all seems a bit odd to me as I didn’t realize that I had… I don’t even know how all of those medications and chemicals got into my system; I don’t even remember ingesting one or two of those pills, let alone bottles and bottles of them. It feels like a reversal, a strange, strange reversal of sorts. I pulled you out of yourself so many times (and the one time I didn’t… I, I…) and now you’re, you’re pulling me out of myself. I know that it’s you who has kept me alive, I know it was you. I know it… I didn’t, I didn’t realize that you weren’t ready to be with me again, that you didn’t want me to join you. I just, I just don’t know what to do here without you, how to live without you. Like living without air. Without food. Without water. Life has always been nothing more than a slow death when you strip it of its romanticisms but mine, mine has become so painful without you. So unbearably painful. At the same time, at the same time it feels almost ironic: saying without you, without you, without you, when, everywhere I look it’s you, you, you. I saw your smile a couple of days ago on the face of a man who had fallen to his knees, arms outstretched with his face pointed towards the heavens – that grin that encompasses your whole face, that draws dimples on top of dimples on your cheeks. I saw your eyes waiting for a bus: your eyes taking in every detail of the surroundings of the person who had seemed to have been holding you for that brief moment, eyes that seemed to be filled with the light of an American night sky on the Fourth of July. I even saw you putting a football in the back of the night five times this past Friday – five times. I wanted to be amazed by it but I know, I know that it was you simply being you. I was sitting out in the lobby just a few hours ago and I heard a man laugh – no, I heard you laugh. You tell me to let go of you and yet you, you still seem to linger. Anywhere. Everywhere. Nowhere. You’re there. Sometimes in the most subtle of ways, sometimes as plain as the nose on my face.
> 
> They’re telling me that I’ve gone insane, that I’ve been driven mad by the memory of you, the memory of us. They’re trying to make it seem as if the lines between what is real and what isn’t have started blurring for me, that some of one has started to fall on the side of the other but I know, I know they simply don’t understand this… This thing that we still seem to have. I know within the depths of my soul that you and I breathed in the same salty air that night, that a man appeared and had offered to take me back to you as soon as I had left you. I know that you and I swam in the same sea last night, that the same salty water that touched my skin had graced yours, that in that moment we shared something again. I know, I know that you felt the same warmth of the same sun dancing on your skin as I had or perhaps, perhaps I have been driven mad in my desperation to be reunited with you again. At any cost becomes this cost, at the expense of everything I am and you know, you know I am willing to pay that and more if only for one more moment with you. On white, sandy beaches, in the cold of mountain tops, I don’t care… They’re telling me that I’ve gone insane but maybe, maybe I’ve just found my sanity in the chaos, discovered what this life truly is in the despair. I just need a sign, something, to tell me that I haven’t completely lost it. Something to tell me…

 “Mr. Casillas…? Mr. Casillas?”

A voice broke through his innermost thoughts, pulled his pen from the paper he had been translating himself onto, had turned his eyes from within his soul to the woman whose voice seemed to be coming from in front of him. He heard her say something about the doctor being ready for him, something about him leaving his things with his admittance officer. He acknowledged the woman speaking, the secretary posted at the desk directly in front him, with a slight nod of the head and an empty smile. (…And so it begins). He looked at the admittance officer for a moment and saw her nod reassuringly out of the corner of his eye as he pulled one of his bags onto his lap. He slid his journal in between two of the books within, securing the bag with the attached zipper as he rose to his feet and searched for the door into the office of the therapist.

The room was dimly lit, the only light that filled it seemed to be coming from a small lamp on the man’s desk and it was doing a piss poor job of lighting anything further than three feet out of it. It smelled of stale crackers and old people and Iker felt as if he could feel the insanity of every other person that had ever come into the room. He fell awkwardly onto the sofa, groaning at how uncomfortable it was as he threw his head back with a sigh. He rubbed at the back of his eyelids for a moment before he eventually worked up the courage to make direct eye contact with the peculiar little man sitting behind the desk.

“Why are you here?”

(Fan-fucking-tastic).

* * *

Thirty minutes had come and gone and Iker felt as if nothing had been established within that time. “I don’t know how many more ways I can say it. I was not trying to kill myself,” (I have to get out of here. They can never understand me. Us. What we have), “I don’t understand why you keep bringing up a gun. I mean, I don’t even own a gun and that gun… I promise you, I have no idea of where it came from. Maybe it was William’s or Liza’s but… Hell, I don’t even know where I’d go to get a gun in this city.” He was getting exhausted, tired of trying to convince these people against something, something he simply refused to acknowledge. “I was sitting at the edge of my bed as I had been talking to an old man only moments before they ran in. I closed my eyes for a moment, a single moment and in that moment, he left and they stormed in. I don’t know where the fuck he could have ran off to but I swear to you, he was there.” His nerved were shot and he felt anxious, he couldn’t stop his leg from bouncing on his toes and he could feel a cold sweat forming along his hairline. “Just stop, please. Stop looking at me like I’m one of those damned nut cases that pass through here. I’m not, I’m not imagining this. I’m not making it up… I know he was there and I know, I know what the hell I am doing and I don’t need some doctor psychoanalyzing my every thought and action.”

The doctor sighed and removed his cheap glasses from the brim of his nose, gently massaging his sinus cavity as he attempted to clear his own head. “Iker, son, I don’t why you are so insistent on fabricating the events of that day. You are here regardless, being involuntarily admitted by the City of Madrid, so you should take advantage of this, you should take this opportunity to help yourself.” He nodded at the man before him but knew he would have been better off speaking to a brick wall when he made out the scowl on the keeper’s face. “Alright now, you claim that you weren’t holding a gun to your…” he searched through the police reports and made an “ah” sound as he found the line of text he was searching for, “…temple as William and Liza walked into your bedroom?”

“No. No I wasn’t.” Iker sighed out, growing more and more exasperated with each passing minute. “The old man, he, he had offered for me to take his hand… I had closed my eyes because I was thinking about it but… Who cares? You don’t believe me anyway.” He had started feeling like a broken record within the last thirty minutes, swearing to himself that he had never met more thick-headed people in his life which, in itself, spoke volumes. “I don’t understand why you keep asking me all of these questions if I’m being admitted either way.”

“Well, we have to figure out why you’re here and police reports…” he trailed as he flipped through a few of the papers in front of him, “…police reports only give us one side of a story. Now then, if you weren’t trying to kill yourself then why did you ingest all of that Lithium and…” he shuffled around and through a few more of the papers on his desk, adjusting his cheap glasses to make out some of the scribbles on one of the pharmaceutical sheets, “…Amitriptyline? Do you remember taking those?” He accepted the nod he received in answer and pulled his pen out from beneath the mess of papers before him. “Do you remember anything of the evening that preceded that morning? Before the “old man”, what do you remember?”

Iker closed his eyes as he recollected everything of that evening. “I had invited over a friend because I felt like shit and I knew that he probably felt like shit. I figured we could feel like shit together… We talked about some things, we talked about Cristiano in particular, and we did some things that are of no concern to you. I can remember having some wine – how much, I can’t be sure – and before I knew it, it was morning. It was morning and the pills were gone – somebody could have taken them? I mean, Liza and William did manage to get into my home without too much trouble.” He wasn’t lying, he didn’t remember taking the pills but he had seen the detox reports and he was certain the hospital had released that information to the treatment facility.

 “According to your detox report from the hospital, you had ingested an incredible amount of antidepressants, Iker. In fact, they noted that you being alive and functioning without any form of kidney failure or brain damage was a medical anomaly in itself..." The therapist groaned and rubbed his sinus cavity again, obviously frustrated about something Iker had said. "Mr. Casillas, I can’t help but feel as if this ‘old man’ of yours was nothing more than a hallucination spurred on by an excessive intake of your Amitriptyline. Whether it was encouraged by anything beyond that, into say schizophrenia, is still too early to determine or for me to say definitively but it’s definitely something we will be looking into. I am marking your admission file with ‘suicidal tendencies and plausible schizophrenia’. Now keep in mind that there is a schizophrenic spectrum and that just because we say schizophrenia it doesn’t mean…”

“I’m not crazy.” Iker muttered out as the psychologist stood up from behind his desk, releasing a sigh of relief as the secretary outside of the small office had opened the door for him. “I’m not some fucking nut job… I know, I know what the hell I saw.”

“Oh, Mr. Casillas.” The eccentric little doctor sighed, as he stepped out from behind his desk to place a heavy hand on Iker’s shoulder. “You’ll soon learn to embrace the infamous words of a one Lewis Carroll. ‘We’re all a bit mad here,’ he had wisely said and that, that’s okay. When we become a threat to ourselves or other people, however, then it is no longer okay and our madness needs to be addressed, okay?”

Iker nodded in defeat as the doctor retreated back behind his desk, muttering something about the older man, that he must have been mental to have admitted him without properly hearing him out. He reconnected with his admittance nurse in the hallway and held his palms up. “Now what? That fucking quack just damned me to a life sentence here, so… What’s the next step?”

“Well,” the nurse smiled sweetly as she looked down at her clipboard, “we just have to conduct a physical exam and then I’ll be showing you to your room. Just wait here for a moment, okay? I need to have a word with Mrs. Avieto,” she finished as she motioned towards the nurse working as the secretary of the therapist he had just seen.

Iker simply nodded and took his seat, opening his bag and pulling his journal out from within its contents. He flipped through the various pages of inked paper and sighed as he rediscovered the point he had left off on. A sense of fear and confusion overtook him, paralyzed him before he could press the pen to the paper and he could feel the book slipping from within his stilled grasp as he read the last few lines that had been scribbled onto the page:

> They’re telling me that I’ve gone insane but maybe, maybe I’ve just found my sanity in the chaos, discovered what this life truly is in the despair. I just need a sign, something, to tell me that I haven’t completely lost it. Something to tell me…
> 
> **You’re not CR-CR-crazy.**

The handwriting was unmistakable, was familiar and it sent chills down his spine. He looked up towards the door of the counselor he had just spoken with, thinking that if he could somehow show this to somebody then maybe... (No). Iker quickly dismissed the thought as he remembered where he was and who the people were that surrounded him; they’d have him in a strait jacket before he could convince them that it wasn’t him. (No. I'm just imagining this. It’s not, it’s not really there). Iker cleared his throat and hurriedly put his journal away, silently promising himself he’d come back to it, as he made out his admissions nurse making her way back towards him from down the hallway.

“Alright, to the examination rooms but first…” she hastily slapped an anklet around the keeper’s leg and stood up, instructing him to not leave the lobby area while they were out front conducting the exam. She even laughed about a ten minute old incident of somebody leaving the lobby with it on. “Look, I know it’s not the greatest but they’re temporary. They’ll remove it as soon as we reach the residential floors, I promise.”

“Fantastic,” Iker groaned looking down at his new ‘jewelry’ though there was nothing fantastic about the situation. Not only did he feel mental but he now felt like a prisoner.

“Oh try not to worry so much about it, love. On a positive, I just found out that you’re sharing a room with one of your teammates.” The nurse gave him a smile, one that a mother would typically give her child after telling him he could have ice cream for dessert...

Iker appreciated the effort and offered her a small smile in return. “Is that so?” He asked, trying to mask the bittersweet excitement in the undertone of his voice. He hated that some of his fellow teammates were so bad that they had to be confined to a place such as this but he was slightly relieved that he wouldn’t be here alone. When he had arrived and learned that everyone here had a roommate – no exceptions – it had certainly concerned him. He could have been stuck with anyone from any walk of life – a wife beater to some melodramatic ‘kid’ struggling to find footing in the transition into the adult world. Rooming with one of his teammates, though? He was used to that.

 “Yes. It’s a sure thing. Your club’s therapist, Ms. Garza…? Yes, she had called and had it all arranged,” she smiled as she guided Iker down the hall, towards the examination rooms. “I guess she figured you both would be more comfortable with a familiar face and would benefit more if you went through this whole...” she motioned with her hands to draw attention to the area around them “…ordeal together. You’ll be rooming with a one Sergio Ramos,” she smiled as she held open the door to the examination room. “Don’t worry, he’s still going through the admittance process so you’ll have first choice of the beds,” she laughed out as she allowed the door to fall to a close.


	2. I'm Not Crazy - You Are

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Iker had quickly realized that actual psychiatric wards were not as they had appeared in the movies. There was no Hunter Adams running around, searching for his purpose by bringing humor to his fellow psych patients. No... Instead, there was merely the Hunter Adams who found himself standing at the ledge of a cliff, shortly after Carin’s death, contemplating suicide while questioning God – only there was no butterfly. There were no women walking around with baby dolls, desperately trying to holding on to their childhood… There was no herd-like mentality, no alpha of the ward, no unity rather a distance kept, an invisible wall used as a divider amongst the patients as if to say, "I'm not crazy. You are."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *drowns in the editing process, a year later and I still don't have it right*

Another crowded terminal filled with the faces of strangers trying to sneak a glance at his, media reporters trying to figure out where he had just come from, where he could be going, children scrambling, trying to get an autograph, a photograph of him... Part of him was tempted to just yell at them all to show them that he was human just like them. Part of him wanted to cry with them, in front of them if only to show them that he could be just as frail as they were. Part of him wanted to sit down, right in the middle of the terminal, have every one of those people gather ‘round so he could truly talk to them, explain to them that he had problems – real problems – just like them. A bigger part of him screamed for more… Though he may not have been directly involved with Cristiano’s death, he definitely felt as if he had come back from Spain with his blood sprayed all over his hands; he wanted to show them that too. He knew that they – these people flocking around him – wouldn’t view him the same as his guilt would bubble to the surface, spill over into their ears, and, while a majority of those behind the lens didn’t respect him as it was, he knew that something like this would surely bury him… Perhaps that’s what he deserved and nothing less. Perhaps he was being a bit drastic, a bit melodramatic. No matter what it was, what it truly was, in his eyes it would have been deemed as justice being served.

A few more steps forward, a few more thoughts buried, and he was climbing into his Mercedes, wondering where he had lost his sense of normalcy in the eyes of those people that trailed him – cutthroat English media and fans alike. When he became immune to problems that may form off the pitch, when he became iron-like allowing them to use whatever words they deemed fit in reference to him, in the eyes of the ones in Blue. He thoughtlessly pressed the start button of his SUV, heard the engine softly hum to a start, and slowly left those eyes behind, helplessly wondering what fittingly awful words they had in store for him – tomorrow. And the next day. And the next…

Fernando was still lost in his thoughts as he pulled into his drive, slightly curious as to how he had managed to find his way to the place without incident as he had been quite distracted en route, and inwardly groaned as he found Olalla’s car parked in the garage. He wasn’t ready for whatever abuse she had planned but he felt as if, whatever it was, it would be deserved. He hung his keys on the little key rack by the entry door and dropped the bag of luggage he had picked up in Madrid to the floor with a loud – thud – cautiously glancing around the living areas as he did so. He found and cleared the kitchen, dining room, family room, and frowned as he found the living room to be as devoid of life as the rooms preceding it. The house was quiet, unusually quiet – (Nora? No, she’s probably already run off to school by now and Leo… No. Leo is never this quiet). Fernando strained his ears, listening closely for any sound of life within the still home, and eventually held his breath until he was able to make out… (Sniffling? Is someone crying? Why would…?) “Olalla?” Fernando called out as he made his way further into the home. “Olalla is that you?” He tried again as he checked the other rooms of the house along the way; Leo’s room, Nora’s room, and all of the guest rooms held no one. (She must be in our… In the master bedroom). “Olalla,” the striker whispered as he gently pushed the door into the room, slightly afraid of what he may or may not find, “is everything al…?” He stopped mid-question as he found Olalla sitting in the middle of what was once ‘their’ bed, surrounded by tissues as mascara bled down her cheeks to paint the corner of her lips. “What’s wrong? Where’s, where’s Leo? Is everything okay with Leo?”

Olalla shook her head dismissively and waved her hand just enough to indicate that the kids were fine. “I, uh… How was, how was Spain, Nando? Did, uh, did everything go okay with Sergio?”

Fernando was hesitant in answering her as her question was missing that bitter undertone a question of that nature all but required of the wronged. Not to mention, Olalla was crying and he was fairly certain that Olalla wasn’t shedding any tears for him. “I don’t think that that’s important right now, Olalla. You seem, you seem pretty upset and I mean… Just, I mean no offense but you’re kind of a mess right now.” He grabbed a fresh Kleenex out of the box of tissues that was resting on his drawer and sat down in front of his wife, doing his best to wipe away her straying black tears. He folded the tissue in half and attempted to clean the now charcoal gray coloring off her cheeks to his best efforts and rubbed away the red lipstick smudges from beneath her nose with his thumbs. “That’s a little better now, love,” he sighed as he tossed the dirtied tissue into the waste basket by the bed. “I don’t know that you’d want to talk about it with me after I’ve… I mean, if you want to talk about whatever has you feeling like, like this,” he mumbled out as he gestured to Olalla’s current form, “…you know that I’m here.”

Olalla lowered her head and shook it in disappointment, tears lining up at the brim of her eyelids. Her breath was shaky and she did her best to catch it but her nerves kept getting the better of her. After a few moments of failed attempts at regaining her composure, she looked up at her husband, salty water freeing itself to stream down her cheeks. “I was going to call you. I… I even had your number punched in a couple of times but I, I, I just couldn’t and I… Fernando. I, I was pregnant.”

He immediately felt a shattering in his chest, felt as if a little bit of his spark had been taken from him. “What do you, what do you mean you ‘were’ pregnant? What does that, what does…? Oh, no. Oh, God no. You, you had a miscarriage? Oh my, oh Olalla… It’s not, it’s not your fault, sweetie. These things, these things they just happen. They… If anything, if anything it’s my fault. I’ve put so much stress on you lately. So much…” he tried pulling his wife in for a hug, tears falling freely from his eyes, but he felt himself being pushed away, Olalla pulling away.

“No. No! Just, just stop it, Fer. Stop it.” She sobbed out as she tried to create a distance between herself and Fernando. “The baby, the baby wasn’t yours Fernando. The baby… The baby wasn’t yours,” she cried out as she pulled her knees into her chest. “You weren’t the father.”

Fernando pulled back for a moment, eyebrows furrowed in thought as he performed simple math. They had been going through the divorce process for about four weeks, for her to have gotten pregnant within that time-frame… “Olalla, I don’t care that you became pregnant when we weren’t together. It’s not as if, it’s not… You still don’t have to go through the aftereffects of a miscarriage alone. Does the…?” He hesitated, already feeling the pain of his next words but he had no right to express how much they hurt him. “Does the father know that you’ve miscarried or…?”

 “I didn’t have a miscarriage Fer,” Olalla sighed out as she threw her head back, eyes focused on the light above what was once their bed. Her voice was flat and distant, opposing the hurricane of emotion she felt within the confines of her soul. “I, uh, I found out that I was pregnant a few days after you had left for international duty.” Olalla sobbed, looking at her husband in the eyes for the first time since he had arrived.

It explained everything: the odd behavior when he had flown back into England after international duty with Spain, how accepting and understanding she suddenly was… but who was he to judge her? So she had had an affair. So had he. “If you, uh, if you didn’t have a miscarriage then what, what happened to the baby? Did it vanish into thin air or something or was it…? What happened, Olalla?”

She drew in a large breath of air and summoned whatever kind of courage she had left in her. “I called, I called John and we had lunch yesterday. Somewhere small, somewhere quiet where no one would recognize us and we were, we tried to figure out what we were going to do… I mean, can you imagine having…”

(Wait… Wait. Olalla doesn’t know any John’s. Not in England, not in Spain. The only John either of them ever really associated with was… Wait. No. No. No!) Fernando shook his head, silenced that inner voice of his that was now screaming and did his best to tune back in to whatever it was Olalla was saying.

 “…he had told me that he didn’t want kids, not with me at least,” she sighed out as she started to fidget with the fabric of what was once ‘their’ comforter. “He said that, that this was just supposed to be a side thing, that he wouldn’t support the baby, and that you wouldn’t either.” More tears fell down her face. Like a stream. Like a river. Like a tidal wave. “So we, so we, we went by the clinic today and I, I…”

“…but Olalla. You always said, you said…” Fernando stuttered out as he tried to find his wife’s eyes behind the veil of salty water covering them. “And you…? Anyway? No. You didn’t. Tell me you didn’t. I, I know you Olalla. I know you and you couldn’t... Could you?”

Olalla shook her head and pushed her hair out of her face, wiping at the strands that had stuck. “I was scared, Fer. I panicked and I, I thought I knew what I was doing and I thought, I thought… but I’m so fucking stupid, Fer. So stupid. I’m a horrible person and I, I don’t deserve to live,” Olalla sobbed out as she tried to bury her face behind her knees.

Fernando sat there helplessly, letting Olalla cry because he knew that she had to let that pain out, knew that it would be poisonous if she choked down the tears and if her anguish wasn't released now then... He waited until she calmed a bit before he spoke again, choosing his tone of voice very carefully. He was gentle in his approach, making him seem more curious than anything and he did everything within his power to put out the flames of anger he felt burning within himself. “Olalla? You said, you that the baby’s father, that his name was John?” He sighed out, scolding himself as he felt his nerves starting to get the better of him. He just, he needed to know. He needed some kind of confirmation, something to make sure that it was him, something to assure him that he’d be pounding in the face of the right person later on in the week… “I just… You know that I need to know, Olalla. I know you may not think that I have right to know but I…”

“Oh, Nando,” Olalla sighed out, voice pleading for her husband not to do anything rash. “Please don’t do this, Fer. Please. This, this is not your fight. I know that I, that I was hypocritical when it came to Sergio but you don’t, you don’t have to do this, Nando. Please,” she tried harder as she crawled towards her husband, wrapping her arms around his toned shoulders, “please don’t. This is not your fight, dear. This is not… He’s… I can’t have you compromising your career because of a poor decision by me, Fer. I can’t, I won’t have it.” She squeezed Fernando’s shoulders, stained them with more than a few of her tears. “You can’t just openly discuss this kind of thing with your captain over a beer or two, Fer. You can’t…”

“Olalla, he..”

“He nothing, Fernando! He nothing, he nothing, he nothing!” Olalla snapped back, stopping Fernando before he could even begin. “I am a grown woman, I am grown and I don’t need you to run out there and start fighting my battles for me. This, this is mine. I could’ve easily told him to fuck off, I could’ve made the decision to keep this child regardless of what he said, but I didn’t, Fernando. I didn’t! I didn’t... Everything, this, all of this… Everything I’m going through now is self-inflicted, I brought this upon myself and I, I have to deal with this. Me! Not you, Fer. You keep your hands off of him and you, you make sure you are out there providing for your children and your children’s children.” Olalla blew her nose into a tissue as she finished scolding her husband, sighing as she fell back on to the pillow and sighed into her hands. “God, I must look like shit,” she mindlessly muttered out a few moments later, briefly removing her hands from her face to check the clock. “Fernando? I know, I know you just got back but can, can you do me a favor and pick up the kids? Nora’s at school and I dropped Leo off, I dropped him off at daycare.”

Fernando nodded, half-offended that picking up his own children was being labelled as a 'favor' for Olalla, and grabbed Olalla’s keys off of the comforter, lightly sighing out instructions for her to take it easy until he got back. “You can use the rest.” Before he stood up to leave, he leaned in and kissed Olalla on the cheek, smiling against it as he heard her release a relieved sigh. “We all make mistakes sometimes love, sometimes those mistakes result in a loss of life… And we should mourn them, regret them, learn from them but then, then we should leave them in the past and never carry them forward with us.”

Olalla smiled up at her husband and shook her head in disbelief. She had forgotten this – these moments filled with gentle words and soft touches. “Who, uh, who said that one, love?”

“I just did,” Fernando laughed out before leaving her with the name L.M. Montgomery. “I’ll be right back.”

* * *

 

> “You don't kill yourself, stupid; you start a revolution.” – Hunter Doherty “Patch” Adams

When they were all grouped together, they laughed. It didn't take much to make them laugh but once they had started, it would escalate within minutes, growing more and more out of control, as if they were trying to outdo each other in their maniacal hysterics. He didn’t understand exactly what it was they were laughing at and, to be frank, he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to understand them – he was here because he was allegedly depressed not because he was cursed with this, this insanity as they were. He wasn’t here to meet people like him as they seemed to be, he wasn’t here to find someone with a similar mindset as his; it wouldn’t have worked even if he was bothered enough to try, he was nothing like them. He rolled over to his side and stared at the pale blue wall in front of him and listened to them cackle and howl about something another of them had done, their voices echoing out from within the ‘living room’, bouncing off of the white washed walls of the hall. If he had to be here, if he had to be surrounded by these hyenas, then he wasn’t going to leave his bed, regardless of how uncomfortable the bed was or how many of the springs pierced through the thin, cheap mattress.

Iker had quickly realized that actual psychiatric wards were not as they had appeared in the movies. There was no Hunter Adams running around, searching for his purpose by bringing humor to his fellow psych patients... No. Instead, there was merely the Hunter Adams who found himself standing at the ledge of a cliff, shortly after Carin’s death, contemplating suicide while questioning God – only there was no butterfly. There were no women walking around with baby dolls, desperately trying to holding on to their childhood… There was no herd-like mentality, no alpha of the ward, no unity rather a distance kept, an invisible wall used as a divider amongst the patients as if to say, "I'm not crazy. You are."

His first night there, sitting beside Sergio just outside of their room observing the ‘spectacles’ that wandered aimlessly past them, had been his wake up call. They watched as a man, a man whom they had later discovered in group therapy to be a crack addict, wriggled his way free of the security detail and peeled off his clothes, streaking down the hallway. Like a spark in a dry forest, that was all it took: one person in a deranged state, one person to fall apart, and all the others of the ward would quickly follow suite almost as if they were afraid of missing out on the hysteria. Afraid of missing out on a moment viewed by most merely as a means to liberate themselves from the obligations of humanity - even if it was for just a moment. He and Sergio had even exchanged words about joining in on the madness out of fear of being scapegoated. They decided against it though, as they watched they truly insane be fitted with strait jackets before being carelessly tossed into isolation… That was the last thing either of them needed or wanted as both were, at least at the time, afraid of themselves.

He had only been there for three days and already, already he had noticed that everything seemed to be on repeat here - that record your grandparents insisted on keeping from their childhood that played the same recorded segments over and over again, for hours and hours without end: the ringing of pay phone at approximately 1800 that was always for a patient named Gerrard; the nurses discussing their feelings on the new program and whether or not they felt so-and-so’s breakdown was legitimate; that crack addict they had come to know as Lorenzo, streaking down the hallways, always without warning, always with the same manic stare, always drawing an elicit scream from a woman named Pauletta; and the inevitable sobbing of a guy name Martin as he pleaded with the woman of his life, a woman named Clarissa, begging her not to leave him, that he’d get better. Occasionally, the record would skip as the needle would jump, seemingly hitting some new scratch, signifying a change on the ward – a new patient, someone's breakdown, or an actual visitor. And Iker, Iker started to wonder where they all came from, why they were all here, but most of all, most of all he wondered how long each of them had been here. If they were ever getting out, would ever feel the warmth of the sun on their skin again. If he would ever...

Iker snapped out of his thoughts and looked up fearfully as a dark figure appeared in his doorway, outlined by the incandescent lights of the hallway. He just stood there for some time, not bothering to utter a word of explanation, simply breathing heavily and seeming to gently sway his head from side to side to side to side.

“Um, can I help you…?”

Iker released a sigh of relief as he heard Sergio’s angry voice resounding off of the walls of the hallway. His heart had been pounding loud and hard, a cold sweat had rapidly formed against his forehead… He fucking hated this place, he fucking hated these lunatics, but he absolutely loved his roommate.

The figure’s head swiftly turned to face the Sevillan as if to challenge him. “Why don’t you mind your own fucking business, pretty boy?” The voice was rough, harsh, and unforgiving. Iker couldn’t place it with one he had heard at group and arrived at the conclusion that this inpatient must be new. He chuckled a bit to himself, momentarily appreciating the pull of the smile on his face. The poor guy had no idea what three days of this hell had done to Sergio… It had escalated quickly from there: a streak of checkered black and white as a fist, Sergio’s fist collided with what seemed to be the man’s face. Iker wasn’t sure what it was but Sergio, Sergio seemed to be operating on a switch, primal and instinctive in his attack as he continued to pound his fist into the man’s face, spilling the blood of the other to the white tile. A fear overtook him as he saw the security detail prying Sergio off of the man, whether it was a fear for Sergio or of Sergio he couldn’t quite place it… He heard a voice, a voice with an unmistakable German accent yelling for the security to lay off though the chaos on the floor had already been triggered: a woman had started wailing, the crack addict had begun streaking [again], and a man had loudly started informing the nurses that his pixie wings would take him away from this world…

“What the hell are you doing? Get the fuck off of him, man. He was simply trying to get into his room and this fucking lunatic attacked him. I saw the whole thing. That’s, this is fucked up, man. He was just defending himself and he just so happened to be superior in the tousle, man.”

Mesut. It had to be Mesut rambling in a feisty rage. Had the ‘fucking lunatic’ not lost consciousness, Iker was sure he would protest the allegations being made by Mesut but the fact remains that he was lying there in a state of comatose and Sergio was his friend. “It’s true,” Iker weakly voiced in support from his bed. “I was lying here and that guy blocked the entrance. When Sergio asked him to move he just attacked him.” Iker widened his eyes, trying to look as honest and convincing as he could. It must have worked because the ward’s security detail slowly released Sergio from their grasp.

Sergio snatched his arm away from one of the security officers and straightened himself out, smoothing down his white and black flannel and adjusting the rise of his zipper less jeans. He shot them a look of warning and shook his head, feigning disbelief as he stumbled into his room. He restlessly kicked around a few of his own things just before he plopped down on his bed, smiling as he found Iker watching the medical staff bring the ‘lunatic’ back to consciousness and immediately take him away to isolation in a wheelchair restraint, shaking his head as he heard the nurses assuring the man that they’d do a full evaluation as soon as they reached the isolation room. “Are you… alright?” The Sevillan asked as Iker redirected his attention back onto his pale blue piece of the wall.

“Yeah, he just, he just really scared the shit out of me, you know? I guess I still haven’t adapted to the insanity of this place yet.” Iker turned and looked over at the younger man, remembering that he had just returned from being evaluated by the psychiatrist held responsible for their discharges. Of course, the club had shelled out additional money for a private shrink, probably anticipating the display of monetary power that their athlete’s would surely flash in exchange for leniency. They had been right as she had ‘respectfully declined’ Iker’s legitimate bribe of one million euros in exchange for an early release… (Well played, Real Madrid. Well played). “How did everything go with the counselor? Did she hand you a discharge date?”

Sergio scoffed as the question fell on his ears and sat up in his bed, pulling his legs up to rest crisscross in front of him. “She gave me a ‘to be determined’ stamp. I mean, what the fuck is that supposed to mean? She said that there was a hearing about my involuntary admittance yesterday and that they had petitioned for an “Extended Emergency Involuntary Treatment” order. That’s another twenty fucking days here, Iker. I’m pretty sure they’re going to do the same to you and Mesut, shit… I mean, I know Mesut is here voluntarily but still…”

Iker cupped his hands over his face and released a groan; he couldn’t be here for twenty more days. One day of this place had him counting his blessings, two days had him scared shitless, and three days…? Three days had him actually contemplating suicide or anything else that would get him out of here – anything. A light knock at the door pulled Iker out of his thoughts and the sound of the door opening caught his attention fully. He couldn’t help but smile back at the grinning German as he found the young man standing in their doorway; they had all seemed – felt – a bit out of place here but none of them stuck out as much as Mesut.

Iker winced as the lights filled the room and smiled as he found Mesut’s round eyes, chuckled as he heard the German’s cheerful “Hey, my friends! Why are we so gloomy?” (So much for ‘depressed with suicidal tendencies’). “Mesut, I thought you were being ‘depressed’?” Iker laughed as the German edged his way into the room, simply happy to have something worth laughing about, grateful for the little bit of light floating around his world that was Mesut. (He’s never going to last here but not for my reasons). Iker had already found out through both Ricky and Sergio that Mesut had voluntarily admitted himself under false pretenses, claiming to be suffering from suicidal thoughts and tendencies simply so he could be present enough to support his teammates. Maybe Mesut was meant to be their Hunter Adams…

“The psychiatrist we’re all seeing is convinced that I am experiencing ‘manias’ and that my depression may not be ‘unipolar’… They see what I want them to see, my friend.” Mesut giggled while looking over at Sergio. “Or maybe we’re all mental in some way? Let’s talk about life,” the midfielder offered, throwing Sergio a look, “just you and me, yes? I’m sorry, Iker. Maybe next time.” Mesut smiled over at Iker knowing good and well that Iker had been limited in the extent of his conversations since he had been admitted here. The German’s smile deepened as he heard the rustling of Sergio’s sheets and saw him rising to his feet in his peripheral, laughing as he heard the Spaniard’s muttered thanks for not allowing security to throw him into isolation. “I won’t do it again, my friend.” Mesut laughed, “I would love to see you all…” He brought his hands and arms closely to his chest, mocking what he believed to be restricted movement as he made his way back out into the hallway. “Could you imagine that, Iker? It would be priceless.”

Iker bursted out in laughter as he envisioned Sergio being restrained and carted off into isolation. Maybe he could last twenty days in here, as long as he had this little piece of normalcy; fairies, compulsive liars, and crack addicted streakers be damned. As he heard the door closing behind the other two, he sat up and slowly climbed out from under the sheets of his bed. Wanting to take advantage of the additional privacy, he pulled his journal out of his bag full of books, the fear of that entry reviving itself within him. He hadn’t opened it since he had been going through admissions, afraid of both finding the scribble and not finding it… He cursed as the bag slipped out of his grip and toppled over, spilling all of its contents onto the floor. They had told him to unpack and to make himself comfortable but he had no intention of adhering to the instruction of the nursing staff, he wasn't about to set his roots in this place... “Fuck me and fuck this,” Iker muttered out as he bent over to pick up his journal from amongst the pile of books and papers that now littered the floor. Regardless of what he found within it, he had to talk to Cristiano and this was the only way he knew how.

“That is a lot of anger, a lot of hostility you’ve got there. That cannot be healthy, son.”

Iker froze as he heard the voice, that strange, familiar voice being projected from Sergio’s side of their room. (No, this can’t… How did he…? How could he have gotten in here?) Iker slowly glanced towards the door and found it cracked open just enough to make out the figures of people bustling about the hallway. (No, I had… I closed that.) “You…? What, what happened to you? You just disappeared on me and they…” Iker stopped and caught his breath, “they thought I was trying to kill myself. What the hell?”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t take you to him. I get kind of, well, it’s been a while since I’ve interacted with people this, uh, this directly.” The little old man smiled nervously up at the goalie from where he was sitting at the edge of Sergio’s bed. “They aren’t like they used to be, son. Nothing like they used to be. People, I mean. I’m awfully sorry to have taken off like I did but…”

“You left your gun by the way. They found it and they thought I was in the middle of trying to kill myself.” Iker folded his arms across his chest and shot the gray bearded man an accusatory glare. “I never got the chance to thank you properly for that.”

“Wait, my gun? My…? Well, did you tell them that I was just about to take you to Cristiano? I mean, how else was I supposed to get you to him.” The old man asked, tilting his head up towards the Spaniard, sensing the keeper’s animosity. “Did you tell them that you and I were talking? That’s strange, that usually helps people avoid,” he glanced around the room for a moment and turned his attention back towards Iker, “this.”

Iker sighed and turned to look out the window, facing away from the old man, having completely missed the statement amongst the inquiries. Rubbing his hand over his face and through his hair in exasperation, he responded. “They didn’t believe me. They told me that, that you weren’t real. That this, this is all within my mind.”

“They didn’t want to believe you.” The old man quickly answered as he let a compassionate smile take hold of his features. “Don’t worry, son, a lot of people don’t acknowledge me as being real. It’s something that I’m used. I’m quick – in and out – rarely ever seen by anyone unless they happen to be looking for me.”

Iker chuckled to himself as he thought about his last encounter with this old man, as he thought about how every conversation had gone since, how everyone seemed to treat him so differently after he spoke of this old man. “You couldn’t take me to Cristiano anyway. I don’t know why I was ever foolish enough to believe that you could. Maybe I was just desperate, needy…? Either way, it can’t be done… but my foolish belief that you could brought me here and now…” he shrugged off the rest of what he was saying, finding himself incapable of completing the thought.

“I could. And I still can.” A simple answer for what seemed to be such a simple implication to him.

“How did you get up here anyway?” Iker asked as he stared at the busy cars roaming the streets below, his confusion finally settling within him in full. “How did you know I was here? How did you figure out what floor I was on, what room I was in? And I know, I know I closed that damned door before you…”

“Oh, Iker,” the old man sighed as he gently rubbed at his beard. “Don’t you see? You let me in.”

Iker spun on his heel to contradict the gray bearded old man, he knew for a fact he had closed that door, but found Sergio’s bed empty, the old man already gone. He scoured the room, searching for any trace of the elderly gentleman all to no avail. He ran his fingers through his hair, tugging at his roots in frustration as his search came up empty a second time, and collapsed onto his bed. He felt his journal stabbing at his back from beneath him and shifted his weight so he could pull it out from under him and hurriedly flipped open his book to find that mysterious entry still there: (You are not CR-CR-crazy).

“Who the hell were you talking to in here?”

Iker jumped as the voice broke through the silence of the room, dropping his journal to the floor in his surprise. He looked up towards the door to find Kaka watching him, a completely bewildered expression resting on his features. “Did you see where that old man – gray beard, lots of wrinkles - went off to?” Iker suddenly inquired of him after a few moments of awkward silence were exchanged between the two of them.

Kaka’s eyebrows raised as his eyes widened, and he shook his head from side to side to inform the Spaniard that he had not seen an old man. “I just wanted to check on you to make sure you were doing okay.” He stood there for a few more moments, overwhelmed with questions he feared Iker had no answer for and turned to leave before he remembered… “So are you? Okay, that is?” He wanted to pry further as he watched Iker nod his head nonchalantly but eventually decided against it. As he turned to leave, he caught a glance of the journal lying open on the floor: (Something to tell me what?) Kaka wondered quietly as he allowed the door to fall behind him, thoughts lingering on the conversation he had heard Iker having with… himself?

 


	3. What It Is to Burn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I feel diseased... is there no sympathy from the sun? The sky's still fire but I am safe in here, from the world outside

(I don’t think that this is going to work. He doesn’t seem to be adapting here very well, doesn’t even seem to be trying. At least not outside of the therapist’s office. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him this short fused before… and that, that says a lot.) **–Bang!–** (He’s stuck in this wounded animal complex it seems... Hurt and pulled under by his own fear – of the people, of this place – as he snaps at everyone who comes too close to him. Everyone except Iker and myself. I knew that a place like this wouldn’t be good for him. He rolls his eyes at the problems of the others within the group, disregards their issues as actual problems and they look at him – the doctors, the staff – as if he’s never going to get out of here. As soon as she mentioned commitment, as soon as she said… I knew it. I knew it.) **–Bang!–** (Or perhaps I’m just reading too far into the situation; I’ve never had to do anything like this before. I’ve only ever had to understand a defender, a new language, a teammate…) Mesut felt something – his gut, his heart, something – swell at the thought of ~~his teammate~~ his former teammate and the understanding they had once shared… With a slight shake of the head, he banished the thoughts from his mind for the moment and focused back on how he could help the teammates he still had.

Sergio was far from a private person, was an open book as soon as you managed to pick the lock, so he wasn’t worried about the contents of the Spaniard’s mind; he knew he’d be hearing them soon enough: would hear about how things are going with Iker, if they were even going, would hear about how things were going with the therapist, if they were even going, would hear about his plans for whenever he would get out of here, if they were even going… If he was ever going. He just needed a moment with the Spaniard. **–Bang!–** A moment alone, that is.

With a gentle sigh, Mesut glanced over at his roommate, a man name Mikel of whom was convinced he could break free of this place; Mesut was unsure if ‘this place’ was the institution or this life but the man was determined either way, would be free of both soon enough if he continued his head-butting assault on the window. **–Bang!–** He heard Sergio chuckle from his seat beside him and resisted the urge to turn and spare a glare for the Sevillan; he didn’t find the situation amusing, he found it tragic, saddening, a desperate cry for freedom from Mikel’s self, and his heart went out to the fragile man with the not so fragile head. He had heard his story, had felt his pain for a few parting moments, and had washed himself in guilt not long after; Mikel was suicidal, actually suicidal, and here he was pretending to be afflicted by the same torture. It was obvious that Mikel needed to be here while he was going through the motions simply to…

His eyes darted between Mikel and Sergio, Sergio and Mikel, fear consuming his thoughts if only to cast Mikel’s problems within the shadow realms of his mind for a moment. He could see Sergio crumbling before him, slowly being reduced to the very same hopeless, dejected void that stood in the place of what he was sure was once a passionate, purposeful Mikel. The same shame and helplessness that filled Sergio’s eyes poured out from Mikel’s, the same vacancy that lingered beyond Sergio’s surface seemed to be drowning Mikel in its nothingness, in the still of indifference. Smiles empty and meaningless, tears shed if only for themselves.

The German jumped out of his skin for a moment as the ward’s security stormed into the room to detain Mikel. He watched as they struggled to restrain him, the man so emotionally fragile and desolate, so far removed from who he once was, becoming a mountain of unmovable physicality, a fear inspiring reminder of one of the simple truths of humanity: the most dangerous of us all are the ones with nothing left to lose. (I do need to be here as much as you), Mesut thought as he watched them carry off Mikel, (just in a different way. I hope you can understand that.) As he heard the clicking of the door closing, he pulled his thoughts from Mikel and allowed them to fall on the man sitting beside himself. “So, how are things going with yourself?” Mesut asked though he knew Sergio wouldn’t have much of an answer; they had only been here for three days and no revolution of self could ever happen within that time.

Sergio allowed himself to fall onto his back, groaning as a spring forced its way through the mattress and into his flesh. He shook it off, simply happy to have felt the pain of metal, and spoke while turning his attentions towards the splatter marks on the ceiling above them. “I guess it’s going,” he sighed out while threading his fingers through his hair. “Do you remember that little fourteen day stint I pulled in the place up the street?” He asked, unsure of what Mesut had noticed – if anything – immediately after Cristiano’s… “They’re requesting that those files be transferred and they’ve already petitioned for an extension. I’ve only been here for three days and they’re already ordering another twenty…”

“That’s fantastic,” Mesut whispered with a soft smile on his face, nodding his head in approval. “You can use that kind of time to work on yourself, with yourself. This, this is a good thing,” he reassured the Sevillan, searching for the brown eyes of the other man as he suppressed his fear of what he may or may not find within them.

A shrill scream came from the hallway and pierced through the otherwise quiet atmosphere, signaling the start of some other’s psychological breakdown. Chaos ensued: the scream was quickly followed by the usual shouts from the usual suspects – some claiming to see fairies or past relatives, threats of self-harm and even a flash of the floor’s crack addicted streaker – while others started to pace aimlessly, absentmindedly in the halls whispering to someone only they could see.  The German found his feet and jogged over to close the door, attempting to separate them from the circus the floor had seemed to transform into. (Sergio has enough madness within himself, he doesn’t need all of theirs as well), Mesut thought as he made his way back to the bed.

“You think that being surrounded by all of that,” Sergio motioned towards the door, referring to the hectic activity outside of its barrier, “will be beneficial for me? Whatever you say Mesut. For once, you’re the normal one.” Sergio laughed though the smile of never seemed to reach his eyes, and looked up into the round eyes of the German. “Or, at the very least, as normal as they come.” He yawned a bit and smiled to himself. “Then again, I could be wrong, as much of a rarity as that is.”

Mesut chuckled as he recalled an excerpt from an article he had read while killing time out in the ward’s living room – a name he found ironic as most of the ‘life’ within it would rather cease to exist. It was posing the question of what constituted normalcy, what determined if something basic human difference or a mental illness, while questioning the faint line between the two. The mere difference between normality and insanity it had claimed: the label applied to a person depending on the setting or circumstances of their actions. The backdrop transformed mere sadness to depression, the backdrop transformed mere nervousness to anxiety, it was simply the backdrop that transformed normality to this, to insanity… Or so the article had claimed. He glance down into his lap, picking at his fingernails for a moment before he refocused his attentions on Sergio. “Have you spoken with Iker at all since you’ve been admitted? How are things going with him? He seems so… lost.”

 Sergio looked away from the number ten, already knowing where this conversation would be going. As soon as he had found out that he was roomed with Iker, he had known it was a result of his last interaction with Liza. He had hidden his greatest blunder from his captain, his friend, and he knew how much something like this could hurt his fellow Spaniard, how much it would destroy him. He knew that he couldn’t keep something like this from him, despite Cristiano’s unspoken wishes, though he had no idea of how he was supposed to even begin to tell Iker of what had transpired between himself and Cris.

As if reading the mind of the Sevillan, Mesut spoke again, quietly this time, reassuringly. “It would offer him some sort of closure at the very least,” Mesut offered, “but I don’t know, it’s easy to assume that something like this can be too much for him. He’s hurting, he’s fragile, he’s vulnerable… but he is here. Doing this now, doing this sooner rather than later would be better for the both of you.” He reached over and held one of Sergio’s hands within his own, smiling softly because there was still something warm about the Sevillan. “You guys have all of the tools you can ever need here – the therapists, the group, the drugs…” he laughed as he leaned into Sergio’s shoulder and felt the other man chuckle lightly. “You can leave all of this here, all of that guilt, all of that hurt and you can move on, he can move on. He deserves to know, Sergio.”

“I know that he deserves to know what happened that day but I… If I tell him, if I show him that side of me he’d… He’d realize that he lost more than Cris that day, Mes. I mean,” Sergio choked on the words for a moment but forced himself to continue in spite of the overwhelming fear building within himself, “how are you supposed to tell somebody, somebody who was one your closest friends at the club, that you r-r-raped…” he trailed at the world, repulsed by the mere sound of it to his ears. “He loved him, Mes. He did and I, I practically gave Cris the knife as soon as he started to recover from, from me. I… What is he going to think of me, Mes?”

Mesut sighed and shook his head, rubbing his thumb soothingly over the surface of the defender’s hand. “I don’t, I don’t know, Sergio. I am fortunate enough to find myself here for reasons far removed from your own and I can’t… I can’t tell you what to do or what to say but…”

“It needs to be said,” Sergio finished for him with a nod of his own head, finding his own resolve buried somewhere behind his own fears. “What’s one more shattered soul to the list of Sergio’s fuck ups? I’m all but damned anyway.”

* * *

_Make me forget, dear sweet Xanax / Silence my anxiety and numb my pain_

_Take my coordination, powerful benzodiazepine / but before you go, hush the hype of my brain_

_I beg of you, remove the edge from off my mind / Leave me with this silent, relaxing calm_

_You may slur my speech and take my sleep / but please, just still my shaking palm._

Kaka stared over at his roommate, finding himself out of the possession of energy, lacking the resolve to move his head or reposition himself to where his eyes could fall on something else, something more scenically pleasing. No matter, he was pleased enough, finding himself grateful to be feeling more grounded than he had been feeling earlier. He had gone for a walk in an attempt to silence his sudden bout with hyperactivity (the doctors had informed him it was normal to be feeling that way after detox as he had been ‘addicted to a sedative hypnotic’ – bullshit) but he had returned to find worse feelings lying in wait.

The Brazilian had thought long and hard about the scene he had stumbled upon a couple of hours ago, felt a small piece of his past shatter and turn to ash. He had never seen Iker look so lost and detached from the world, hell he’d never seen anyone look so far removed from the present time, but Iker... Iker had always been a source of inspiration for himself, for the team, had always pressed that driving factor, that ability to press forward. But that Iker, that Iker seemed to have died with Cris alongside his own sobriety. The Spaniard had been babbling to himself about someone having left a gun, about someone offering to take him from here, about people thinking of him as suicidal… He released a shudder and silently hoped the incident was a product of their environment or of his own withdrawing mind.

After staring at him for what seemed to be a good half hour, he finally saw movement from his roommate, Carlos, as the other man stirred in his bed. He and Carlos had detoxed on the same day and his Spanish roommate’s body was taking it much harder than his own: he had bouts of hyperactivity and anxiety while Carlos was depressed, fatigued, and hardly ever eating. Their symptoms were supposed to be lifting by the third day, hence his ability to walk around, however Carlos seemed to only be getting worse. Kaka looked up and thanked…

(God?)

Kaka dragged his eyes off of Carlos’ form and peered out in the hallway, catching sight of the spectrum of people lying in wait – each with their own individual problems, each with their own struggles – and found that nearly all of them seemed to wear a crucifix around their neck while they lost their mind, while they lost themselves. Curious, and feeling a longing for something that once was, Kaka mustered up the strength to sit up in his bed, groaning as the sudden movement left him feeling woozy. He dressed slowly, throwing on a pair of his old Milan training shorts and a fitted black t-shirt, and quickly ran his fingers through his hair, applauding himself for the minimal effort he had put into himself. (Progress.)

He kicked over his bag of clothes and started digging through his second bag, reaching all the way down to the bottom of it until he finally produced a crucifix – it wasn’t his, though. Kaka had pulled it out of his unemptied locker, had stolen it just before they had closed off the locker room. It was beaded and white – it was, perhaps, the only inexpensive thing Cristiano had owned (though it certainly had held value to the Portuguese man at one point in time, just not the right point in time). Running his thumb over the grooves of the beading, Kaka furrowed his brow and cracked open his mouth, enamored by the little trinket of faith. Cristiano had believed in God as he had but he couldn’t help but wonder if Cristiano had stopped; Cristiano had been raised a Catholic and he knew that the Catholic’s strongly enforced hellfire as the return for taking your own life…

Kaka held Cristiano’s necklace away from his body and decided to head down to the ward’s chapel. Following all of the signs and forcing his way through an excessive amount of people claiming to be in distress, he found himself standing alone in the midst of the room, staring at a larger version of what he held in his hands: several rows of empty pews filled the space and a lone organ rested, untouched, just to his right. Light streamed in through the stained glass windows, that hung much too high to prevent any deranged person from throwing themselves through it, painting the walls with the light of the pastel colors of a Mother Mary and a Baby Jesus. (A Catholic cathedral), Kaka had thought as he took a seat in one of the pews. (No matter, this is a place to talk to Him… if He’s there.) Kaka placed his head in his hands and tried to pray, frustrated groaning over and over again, as he attempted to pray to no avail. It was as if his mind was blocked, as if God Himself had listed him as an ‘ignored user’.

Kaka jumped out of his flesh for a moment, startled as he heard a man clearing his throat just in front him. “I-I’m sorry,” Kaka stuttered out, still holding the crucifix tightly within his grasp. “I just thought that I was alone.”

The little old man in front of him turned his head and simply smiled. “Oh son, you’re never alone.” The gaze of the man’s eyes fell to the little white crucifix wrapped around the hands of the Brasilian and raised an eyebrow. “Well now, that’s not yours is it…?” He smirked as he found the guilt-filled round eyes of the midfielder. “Why do you have it?”

Slightly startled, Kaka looked back down at the cross and nostalgically ran his thumb over the beading again. “How did you know it wasn’t mine?” He inquired, looking upwards to fully inspect his newfound company. His guest was a small man though his voice was 'large' and rang as firm and unwavering. He had a light gray beard that seemed to be well groomed, extending from above his lip down to his collarbone. His eyes were light and round, seemingly enlightened over a lifetime filled with knowledge and he seemed to wear the wrinkles that had formed around them as a badge of honor, each one seeming to stem from the wisdom he found within his irises... He seemed to be a warm and personable man, though Kaka couldn’t help but feel as if he had known him… once.

The little old man smiled again as he gently placed his elbow up on the backside of the pew, ignoring Ricky’s question as he asked his own. “What happened to him? … to your brother?”

Kaka smiled involuntarily in response and released a small, breathy chuckle, not bothering to correct the man because he found that there was nothing within the question worth correcting. “He, uh, he died. Killed himself actually.” Kaka did his best to fight back the tears he felt forming within that gash of his spirit, succeeding in doing so for the time. “He was, uh, he was Catholic but I, uh… I kind of lost my way after that.”

The little old man shook his head in disbelief and offered Ricky a sympathetic smile. “Not all who wander are lost, son. You have questions, good questions that need an answer. You won’t find them here, though. This is just an empty, quiet room…” The little old man looked around the room as if he was seeing it for the first time. “Throwing something like a cross in a room doesn’t make the place holy. Just the same, simply wearing that thing you’re holding there in your hands doesn't make you holy, either. No, that’s not what it’s about. Religion perhaps but faith? …spirituality? Never, and that’s what this is all about, son. Words in a book are nothing more than guidance but just because you may read them every once in a while, it doesn’t make you any better than someone who's never even seen a Bible. No, this isn’t what it’s all about. This isn’t what anyone’s missing, son. Certainly not what you’re missing despite what this,” he pointed to his head, “is telling you.”

The old man stood up from his seat amongst the pews and turned to leave, Bible in hand, stopping to momentarily place a reassuring hand on the Brasilian’s shoulder. “What’s in here doesn’t matter, son. Nothing in here matters either,” the gray haired man held up his Bible and looked at the book as if he was displeased with it. “What matters is what’s in here.” He placed a gentle finger on Kaka’s temple a smiled.

There was something about the touch of the old man that ignited his spirit, something about the warmth of the hand on his shoulder that filled but he didn’t have the time to dwell in it. He furrowed his brow as he felt the finger of the old man pressed against his temple. “I thought that everything that mattered was held within your heart?”

The old man released a loud, boisterous laugh. “Here?” The old man chuckled out, pointing to his own heart. “What are they teaching you kids these days? This is just an organ, son, nothing more. Now this,” he pointed towards his mind, “this holds everything you are. This is where your thoughts are formed, your beliefs. This is what makes us who we are, who you are. This is your power your you.” The little man started walking away, still continuing to speak. “When you are asked a question you say ‘let me think about it.’ When something bothers you it ‘weighs heavy on your mind’. How does your ‘heart’ know that it’s been broken, so to speak, without something to tell it how it should be working?”

“Wait! Wait…” Ricky called out as he felt the presence of the old man dwindling. “What if, what if I don’t believe in anything?”

The old man stopped at the doorway of the chapel, turning to meet Kaka’s eyes for one last time. “We all believe in something, son. Even an atheist believes he's alive.”

Kaka looked down at the little crucifix wrapped around his hand then back up towards where the little old man had one been standing. “…but,” but he’d already gone. He sat there with his mouth agape, dwelling in the waves of deep, intense thought the little old man’s ripples of wisdom had spurred, drowning within everything that made him himself. He stared back down at the little symbol and carefully slipped it over his head, bowing his head and prayer as he felt the cross fall over his chest breathing a new rhythm into the beat of his heart:

> _My Heavenly Father, I come before You in prayer._
> 
> _Great God,_
> 
> _O Lord, it is no fun to not be myself; I feel, I feel so lost, so confused. I feel like I am wandering lost in such a dark valley; while I do not want to be here, I realize that this is where I need to be. I pray that you help the workers and specialists here to do what is best for me, because I am at the end of myself._
> 
> _Father, I can hide nothing from you so I feel I must honest in my words… It sometimes feels as if You have forgotten me, deserted me, and left me to fend for myself. I know that is not true, for Your Word says that You will never leave me nor forsake me, and that You make no exceptions… but it doesn't always feel that way._
> 
> _…but never mind me, Father. I selfishly come before You and ask that You touch my friend, Iker, with Your all-powerful hands of healing. I pray that you help him cope with the loss of our beloved friend, Cris, and I pray that you help deliver him from the unhealthy thoughts that seem to have ravaged his mind, and help him to gain a surer footing in life. Please, dear God, help him, guide him on his path to recovery. I pray that you help others to help him._
> 
> _His life is in Your hands as he battles against the wickedness that is depression. I know that, unless he happens to be alive when Jesus returns, he will eventually face death as we all do. I know that all creation groans, and that he is a part of that creation as am I. I know that although our souls have now been redeemed, the redemption of our bodies is something we are still patiently awaiting. I just ask that you wait to redeem his a little while longer._
> 
> _Like the Lord Jesus Christ, I say, “Not my will, but Yours be done.” I know what I want, but I also know that Your plans are so involved, so complicated, so intricate that I cannot even begin to perceive how You work all things together for the good of all, at least often times I cannot. But You are good. You are loving. And You are all powerful. You allow this evil and the effects of this curse to produce a greater good for us in the long run of life... Only You alone can see the big picture._
> 
> _…but I also know that often I have not simply because I have asked not. I also know that You have chosen to touch millions; please, Lord, I pray that you include Iker in that number. I go on record as asking. I ask You to heal him from this depression and this dark suicidal state he has entered. Please touch him and help him have a complete recovery, or to at least improve._
> 
> _Bless the medical experts who are trying to help him, my Lord. Give them wisdom and direction they need to be successful in their efforts. Prosper their treatments, help them pinpoint the best strategy, and may it be effective. Help him respect them, help him remember that a doctor, Luke, was privileged to write the third Gospel. And help him to intelligently seek competent medical attention should he not feel these to be worthy._
> 
> _I pray in the Name of Jesus and for His glory, Amen._

Ricky opened his eyes, immediately catching sight of the little white cross hanging around his neck, swinging back and forth, back and forth. He believed in other people, he believed that Cristiano was in heaven, he believed that there was a God, and he believed his old pastor could go fuck himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I borrowed the title from Finch. ( [ What It Is to Burn ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLbHfOhJNR4) )


	4. Drowning in the Grays

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I’m flirting with the line, drowning in the grays, somewhere in between the question “why did you have to leave me” and the knowledge that “you [had] never left me”. Back and forth, from one thought to the next, from one extreme to the next… Common sense would dictate that I find the middle ground but what is common and what is sense anymore? Everywhere I look I see differences, everywhere I look everything seems to be so senseless, senseless, senseless…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Editing? Always.
> 
> If you didn't read the initial or, as a reminder, there was a timeline discrepancy when I went to insert Fernando into the plot so that's what a majority of this is. I also combined the original fifth chapter with the fourth chapter because I had dragged everything out on the initial posting so there's that as well.
> 
> -I often refer to the fans as "the pulse" and the "white noise".-

Fernando sighed and glanced down at the text message for what had to be the twelfth time within the past two minutes and then back at the clock that read 0815 in bold, digital green. (Training at 0915 Wednesday; be there an hour early). He was going to ignore it, had told himself that with everything else going on that this was the last thing he should be doing… yet there he was, sitting in his Mercedes just outside of the Cobham Training Center just over an hour early, a silent answer to José’s request within itself.

He quickly gathered his belongings and climbed out of the car, drawing in a sharp intake of the morning’s cool air as he caught sight of his manager’s car already abandoned within the lot. He stopped in his movements for a few moments as he thought briefly about not going in for one last time, about not following through with it; ultimately, his body responded to the thought as he mindlessly closed his car door and started carrying himself forward regardless of his hesitation. He tossed his duffle bag into the locker room as he made his way towards the Portuguese manager’s office, pausing as he stood outside of the door of the other man’s domain. He drew in another large breath of air and allowed his fist to fall against the door without intent as he turned the handle without waiting for a response.

José was sitting behind his desk, staring absently at the white board just to the left of where Fernando had found himself standing. The hair beneath his cheekbones was starting to thicken and was screaming for a razor, the hair atop his head was oily and seemingly desperate for a wash but he still managed to pull off the homeless look. He didn’t shift his gaze as soon as the other man had entered the room as he knew that the attacker wasn't in there for that kind of attention, that he wasn’t in there because of a need to be seen by eyes... “Be not afraid of greatness,” he sighed as his thoughts grew distant but remained forever still on the other, “for some are born great… but what is it to have been born great? What is it to have always been great? It’s nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Normalized nothing. Expected nothing. Nothing special, nothing unique, nothing worth celebrating.” His voice was barely audible, just over a whisper but voluminous in an otherwise silent room. “Some achieve this, this greatness and others will have it thrust upon them…” he pulled his eyes from the board and found the other man leaning against the wall and smiled softly, “...and then there’s you.” He found his feet and slowly made his way over towards the bronzed man in a state of awe. “You are the epitome of the very word. Great.”

Fernando could feel his heart pounding wildly within his chest, heard each thrumming sound of the muscle as it contracted and expanded against his sternum and for a moment, for a moment he wondered if the other man could hear it, too. Sweat was forming against his palms and he anxiously ran his fingers through his hair, threaded them through the strands of brown as he searched for anything else to distract his attentions from that piercing stare of the Portuguese manager. He had never seen José in such a state, had never seen him looking so rough yet so soft in his gaze, had never seen his features so coldly set, so firm and yet his words, his words so warm and comforting. He didn’t mind if he seemed to be looking beyond him, didn’t mind if he didn’t necessarily connect with the words as they had rarely been muttered about a player such as himself since his arrival at Stamford Bridge. Still he felt moved, still he felt affected by this other man...

Fernando shuddered as he saw José reaching up and released the shaky breath he hadn’t realized he had been holding as he felt José’s thumb grazing over the highs of his cheekbones. His lips moved and for a moment he thought he should say something but he soon felt José’s finger over his lips, the sounds of a shushing sound over his ear just before the words “there’s no need for words right now.”

José pulled away from the other man and smiled softly as he found the shining eyes of the attacker. “I know things seem extremely difficult right now, I know things are rough for you and I know, believe me, I know you may feel as if there is no one who can understand what you’re going through… I just need you to know that I understand you. I understand. The weight of this expectation, the weight of being perfect for every match and the weight of the consequence for every time you are not. I know. I understand.” Tears filled the eyes of the salt and pepper haired man and he shook his head, wiped his eyes and laughed at himself. “Believe me, I know and these people, this country…? They’re not merciful, not compassionate when people like us - you and me - are going through difficult times. They jeer us, demand our heads but… Just remember that I appreciate you. Everything you have done. Everything you are doing. Everything you will do.”

Fernando felt like asking him how he knew, what he knew, and when he figured it all out but he couldn’t find the thought in time and when he found it, he couldn’t find the words for it. Even still, as he moved his lips he saw José lean in towards him, felt his lips lapping softly against his own and allowed his eyes to gently fall to a close. A hand on the back of his neck, a taste of warm beer, and he was gone gone, gone. He had never been kissed by anyone in such a manner in the entirety of his life, had never felt more than a touch physically as lips fell against his own but suddenly, suddenly he felt those lips everywhere - lips on his thoughts, lips within his soul. It was slow yet passionate, no words ever uttered and yet so much said.

(I need to show him what he means to me. [The world]. I need to show him what he can’t feel from the pulse. [This love]. I need to show him that he is appreciated. [Thank you]. I need to show him that he can be understood. [I see you]). A tear streamed down José’s cheek and crawled through the rough hairs on his face as he poured the contents of his soul into that kiss. It was neither rushed nor was it an empty sentiment, it was soft and full of meaning, full of understanding, full of all they ever were. It was as they had always been…

...Never about love nor lust - they had merely appreciated one another when no one else had, had held faith within one another when the rest of the world’s seemed to die and fall away. It was never about anything more than simple whispers of reassurance, light touches of admiration.

\---

Fernando quietly made his way back to the locker room, face flushed and thoughts still plagued by the haze of the kiss. He felt as if he had been blindsided by it, never having been kissed in such a manner and suddenly he found such a thing unacceptable. A small smile ghosted over his features as he caught fire; he suddenly felt invincible, felt untouchable by anything other than those lips ...and the sight of John was the water over his fire, thoughts and feeling turning to nothing more than gray steam and black smoke as he found his captain standing before his own locker.

John glanced up as he heard movement within the room and smiled as he saw Fernando in the doorway. “Oh, hey Torres,” he called out as he adjusted his shorts and pulled his training shirt out of his locker. “Mou said that you weren’t feeling so hot yesterday, said you were sick or something. I hope you’re feeling better, mate. I went by the house to check up on you but Olalla had said that you weren’t there at the time.” (This is easy enough), John thought as he pushed the events of the day prior out of his mind. He had paid Olalla a pretty hefty chunk of change to keep the abortion between the two of them but he was having a difficult time with it himself.

(Oh, you were at the house yesterday? That was so kind of you). Fernando gritted his teeth and pulled his bottom lip between them, chewing it until the taste of his own blood coated his tongue. (Keep your hands off of him. Provide for your children). “I’m feeling much better now, I suppose.” Fernando managed force out as he made his way over to his locker. “I appreciate you looking out for me like that. It’s nice to know I still have a true friend here…”

John froze as he was pulling his shirt over his head, easily picking up on the cutting sarcasm within Fernando’s tone of voice. He quickly re-found himself and finished dressing running his mind over the conversation he had had with Olalla the day before, scoffing in disbelief of her as he slammed his locker shut. “She told you, I presume. She told you about the…”

“I couldn’t possibly know what you’re talking about, John.” Fernando kept repeating it. (Keep your hands off of him. Provide for your children). Like a mantra his thoughts circled the words, drowned in Olalla’s voice but he was at the verge of going mad. “She was quite upset when I came home but hey, at least no one died right?”

“We both came to that decision, Fernando. It’s not as if I forced her into having the abortion and besides, it’s probably what was best; it was the only logical decision. If anything, it was you who forced her hand so you can shove that pretentious act up your ass, huh? Your marriage is in the shitter and it’s no secret; yeah, I saw you in there Mourinho only this time he didn’t have you bent over some desk,” John whispered harshly as his face reddened, finger pointed towards the hall in the general direction of Mourinho’s office. “Please, you and Olalla were never even going to see next year and I can’t have that burden…”

“Oh, it’s a burden now? No a burden is having to take on an extra job to feed your family or having to survive a month on minimum wage… You’re just too much of a pussy to deal with the consequences of your actions. That’s why you agreed with this, for yourself.” Fernando had more to say, a lot more, but a laughing David Luiz and Juan Mata came bursting through the doors before he could, forcing him to swallow his words but he kept his glare on John.

“Fernando,” Juan shouted as he pulled his fellow Spaniard into a loose hug and rested his hand carelessly on his shoulder, “I’m glad to see that you’re feeling better, man. You should have called me. With all of this shit going on…” he trailed as he thought about the last couple weeks and shuddered on the inside, “...we have to stick together. You can’t go disappearing on us like that.” He squeezed Fernando’s shoulder gently and walked over to his locker where he began to dress himself appropriately.

“Yeah,” David agreed as he made his way over to Fernando and hugged him tighter than necessary. “If it’s the soup kind of sick or the other kind of sick… Just let me know, man. Check in.” He smiled as Fernando shook him off and mumbled ‘alright mom’ and ran his fingers through his hair. “I heard Kaka is probably going… Real Madrid released a statement of some kind and…”

“Sergio, too,” Juan added as he slipped into his shorts and searched his locker for his training shirt. “And Iker. All of them.”

“Have you talked to any of them since…?” He trailed as he found himself incapable of saying the name. He had never been close with Cristiano, not really, but he still felt the loss, still felt the hurt and could only miss the smiles that the other man would so often bring. “Have you?”

Fernando nodded and placed a hand on the Brasilian’s shoulder and offered him a small smile. “I spoke with Sergio and he’s pretty, he’s pretty messed up. He’s not even bad, he’s so far beyond that and I’ve heard that Iker, I’ve heard that he’s even worse. There was a news report this morning about a police response to his house but I… I don’t know the details. I didn’t hear anything about Ricky though. Just Sergio and Iker.”

David nodded as Juan frowned and meddled within his mind. “I hope that they’re able to help them,” he sighed out as Fernando and David nodded in agreement. “That’s no way to live.”

“It’s not,” Fernando agreed as he managed to catch John’s eye, “but at least they’re alive. Hopefully they can keep them that way.”

John decided that he’d carry his boots onto the training ground and turned his body to head out the door. He pointed between himself and Fernando, muttering “We’ll talk later,” and it was far from a request when it was coming from John Terry. He nodded his head in acknowledgment of the other two in the room and left without muttering another word, not even bothering to respond to Fernando’s passive-aggressive “what’s done is done” retort.

\---

Dirt, he tasted dirt. Dirt and grass as he found himself face down on the pitch of Cobham for only the eighth time during the day’s training session. He groaned as he picked himself up off of the turf and started to pick blades of grass out of his teeth as he searched for his aggressor, searched for the man at the other end of the tackle and frowned as he found John dancing with the ball just in front of Cech. (That motherfucker). He caught his eye and easily found the smirk plastered on the Englishman’s face. (Asshole). Blue. Blue. Blue. Red. Stars. Black.

White. A bright white light. He groaned as he opened his eyes against the light and attempted to shield away the atrocity with his arm and became overwhelmed with a sense of confusion. He felt metal, cold metal pressing against his back and he tentatively glanced around the room as he attempted to place his surroundings. His face seemed to hurt all over and his head was pulsating in pain so he figured he was in right place when realized that he was lying on an examination table in the club medic’s office. How he had managed to get himself there, however…? He groaned as he remembered rushing towards the English defender, fist flying through the air faster than a penalty, and shook his head as he remembered the last thing he saw: a fist coming at him… Sure there had been a lot to say between the two of them but he felt fairly confident that he should have been the one saying them.

“He clunked you pretty good, huh?” José chuckled out as he looked at the mess of black and blue on the face of the man pressed up against metallic gray. “I hope you were able to get whatever all of this was out of your system,” the older man sighed out as he fell into the seat just beside the bed and crossed his legs, “...because whatever this is, I’ve had to suspend you from the next three games for it.” He looked up at the striker and shook his head in admonishment, clearly frustrated with position the incident had put him in. “I can’t play John, not with that black eye, and I definitely can’t play you… What am I supposed to do now?” The question was a rhetorical one, was more for himself than anything, and he lost himself as he thought about it for a moment before eventually releasing a sigh of defeat. Within a few minutes, he found his feet again and ran his hand through the salt and pepper strands of hair on his head; he seemed to be even more distraught than he had been in the moments before. 

José went to leave the room but turned to Fernando just before he did and gave him a half-smile. “I know it can become difficult with all of the media pressure and with the pulse but… You can’t lose your composure like that. You’ve always been a hot-head, I know, but you’ve grown beyond that. Just, just don’t do this again. The team suffers without you and I expect better than this from you.” 

Fernando furrowed his brow as talks of pressure and expectation reached his ears. He didn’t know when the media had started caring about his performances; hell, they only seemed to want to write of him in a negative light. He shook his head at himself because, as much as he hated it, these were the facts and, if anything, they'd only say "it was just a matter of time". He was only expected to fail here, to fuck up in ways like this, to crack under the pressure… He was far from the man Mourinho had been speaking of. The team suffers without him? No, the team suffers because of him. He felt the tears starting build from within himself and he closed his eyes against the moisture, allowed his memories to carry him to the better days of Red in Liverpool, of the Rojoblanco in Madrid…

\---

Wait a minute. You did what…?” She was flustered and somewhere beyond the point of anger. She had asked him to do one thing, a simple thing really, and yet he still couldn’t find himself capable of doing the one thing. “Fernando, I asked you, I practically begged you not to touch him but what do you go and do…? I swear, you don’t think and you let yourself be blinded by this pride of yours and… do you, do you even think of anyone other than yourself? Do you, Fer?”

“Olalla,” Fernando tried as he watched his wife scurry about the house, “he kept tackling me to the pitch. My teeth? My teeth are practically a dirt brown, Olalla. Look at them. Look at them!” Fernando demanded as he flashed her his teeth.

Olalla laughed but she was far from amused. “Oh, he tackled you, huh? He tackled you to the ground, baby? Oh, are you hurt? Are you okay?” She shook her head at him and continued throwing her things into her bag. “For fucks sake, Fer. He’s a fucking defender. A defender. Isn’t that in his job description? Tackle the attacker to get to the ball before he puts it into the back of the net...” She grabbed her purse off of the table and headed for the door. “Oh that’s right,” she mumbled bitterly to herself as she pulled her keys off the key rack, “you barely even play anymore and, when you do, putting the ball into the back of the net is the last thing on your to-do list. How dare he tackle you.”

“Hey! Wait a fucking minute. Where are you…?” The door slammed shut before he could finish his question and he didn’t bother trying. He could admit the truths of his situation to himself but hearing it from other people, from Olalla for that matter…? He shook his head; he knew that she would be pissed about what he had done but to be this mad seemed a bit ridiculous. Fortunately, he didn’t have to think about his bitter wife for long as his phone started buzzing and momentarily pulled him away from his thoughts.

Fernando slid his finger across the screen and held the phone up to his ear, smiling as Sergio’s “Hey, Nando, how are things” tunneled through. Despite everything that Sergio seemed to be dealing with, he still started off their conversations asking about him. “Things are pretty dreary in London Town,” he sighed out in response as he made his way into the living room and became comfortable on the sofa. “Let’s talk about Sergio first, though. I thought that you were being admitted today?”

“No, not today,” Sergio answered back simply as he threw another pair of his jeans into his suitcase and started searching his drawers for his favourite long sleeved flannel. “I spoke with Liza and she said that she would wait until after the game on Saturday to do all of that shit.” His voice had softened as he had finished, his thoughts on the game looming not far ahead in his future. “It’s supposed to be a commemoration game and she isn’t so evil that she’s not going to let me play. I’m just, I'm just trying to figure out what to pack for my trip to hell. You know Mesut might be coming with me, too?”

“That’s awesome,” Fernando sighed out in relief as he was relieved to say the least. He didn’t like the idea of Sergio being in a “behavioural health facility” as it was, so to hear that he may have a familiar face around seemed to put his mind at ease with the situation. “I didn’t know that they were allowed to do that.”

“Oh, no. They don’t,” Sergio chuckled out as he started throwing random tee-shirts into his suitcase, “but Mesut doesn’t seem to be giving a fuck about what they do or don’t do. He told me that he’d fake an illness if he felt uncomfortable with the place.” He had emptied his drawer of tee-shirts and decided that he’d empty his underwear drawer into the bag next. “So, it’s raining in England? What happened?”

Fernando sighed defeatedly into the phone and started massaging his nasal cavity as he relived the events of the day within his mind. “I’m, uh, I’m suspended from our next match. Hell, I’m suspended from the next three matches.”

“For what?” Sergio’s voice hitched to a break over the phone, he had sounded like a boy who had just hit puberty, and he stilled his movements as he anxiously awaited the response. There had been no games that day, at least none that Chelsea had participated in so for Fernando to have gotten suspended...? ...from three matches no less? It all seemed suspiciously Sergio of him, nothing at all like the Fernando he knew.

“Perhaps I went after John Terry and gave him a nice shiner?” Fernando drew in a large breath of air and anxiously waited for Sergio’s response, a reaction of any kind. He was briefly relieved when he heard the Sevillan’s amused laughter breaking the silence on the other end of the line but that relief began to dissipate as he realized that he was being laughed at - that was never fun.

“Fernando, were you drunk? The man’s built like a brick shit-house and you’re... No offense, you’re kind of not. You’re wiry and kind of twig-like compared to him. He probably uses guys like you to pick broccoli out of his teeth or something. What on this green earth would make a guy like you go after a guy like him?”

The freckled Spaniard shook his head at himself and bit his lip, willing himself to spill anything and everything to the Madrid defender. “When I flew back in from Spain, I came home and found Olalla on the bed in tears. She was a mess and I… She, uh, she had an abortion while I was away and she was pretty messed up about it.”

Sergio stopped packing his bag and sat down on the bed, giving the words of the striker his undivided attention. “She had an abortion without telling you?” He shook his head in disbelief, not believing the words the second time they reached his ears. “I get that you guys are struggling, that there’s trouble but to do something like that is… That’s a pretty shitty thing to do.”

“She wasn’t obligated to tell me, Sergio. The baby, the baby wasn’t mine,” he breathed out as he reached up and pinched the bridge of his nose. “She said that it was John’s and I…”

“Wait a minute. John Terry’s? Why would she…? Oh. OH! ...and she had the nerve to threaten my career?” Sergio felt outraged by the hypocrisy but he quickly remembered that the woman felt badgered enough by her own conscious, recognized that criticizing her for her own errors in no way righted his wrongs. He drew in a large breath of air and calmed himself before he continued. “I still don’t understand why she would feel the need to have an abortion though?”

(If anything, it was you who forced her hand. If anything, it was you who forced her hand. If anything, it was you who forced her hand). Fernando threw his sights to the ceiling and fought back the tears he felt forming within his eyes. “She said that he didn’t want to have children with her and he somehow managed to convince her that I wouldn’t support the baby either… I suppose it didn’t take much to convince her of the latter, our marriage hasn’t been the most stable thing lately. I mean, she was filing for divorce not even a week ago and now she’s… I don’t even know where she is right now.” Fernando wiped away the few straying tears he had lost off of his cheeks and drowned himself in the what-if’s of the situation. “Maybe if I had been more supportive, more present, given her the attention she needed then maybe none of this…?”

“Wh-what are you saying?” Sergio managed to stutter out as the words reached him, his heart rate rising as a sense of panic overtook him. “What is that supposed to mean?”

Fernando could hear the uncertainty in the other man’s voice and could already imagine the look of distress he must have been wearing on his face; sad Spanish eyes and a heavy Spanish frown, the thought alone sent tears like razor blades rolling down and cutting into his own cheeks. “I don’t think that… It’s just that I think I need to…”

“No, no.” Sergio interrupted the other man as he looked down at his own hands, thoughts returning to his own situation. “I understand. I do. You need to figure out your shit and I… I need to figure out all of my shit and I guess… I guess we should probably focus on ourselves for a bit.”

“Then you don’t understand what I’m saying at all.” Fernando rushed out as he sensed where the conversation was going. “I’m not quitting on this, on us. I can’t, Sergio. I need this, I need us… Are you…? Please don’t, don’t do this to…”

“No,” Sergio interrupted as Fernando’s pleas reached him, “No I’m not I just thought… I thought that you wanted this to be over so that you could, you know? Focus on Olalla and…”

“Don’t Sergio,”Fernando cut in before the Sevillian could finish. “Don’t you ever think again if that’s where your thoughts are taking you. I’m not us on hold or anything. I can’t. I could never… There was a reason why I was in Spain, why I was with you in Madrid and not here, not in England. Not with Olalla, Sergio.”

“...and why were you in Spain?” Sergio sighed out as he rose from where he had been sitting in the bed, aimlessly pacing around his room, throwing random pieces of fabric into his suitcase. He didn’t want to focus too much on the answer because he was fairly certain he wouldn’t like it but it had been a question he had felt obliged to ask. “What were you doing in Madrid, Fer?”

Fernando froze where he sat as the question befell him. Why had he gone back to Spain immediately after the international break? ...because his family was in Spain? ...because Spain was the place he could always return to when he felt lost? ...because Spain was home? Home. No, Sergio was…

“It’s fine,” Sergio mumbled out as he tossed a few of his scarves to the floor and threaded his fingers through his hair. “You don’t have to answer it. You don’t have to… Just don’t say anything, not if you intend to feed me another lie.”

“Home,” Fernando blurted out as he felt his heart racing within his chest. “I went back to Spain because my home is there ...because you’re there, Sergio.” He wasn’t thinking about his words anymore, he was simply feeling them. “I love you, Sergio.”

\---

The silence was eating away at him and it had reached the point that it had become unbearable. Olalla had taken their children back to Spain, to Galicia to be with her mother so she could work with and on herself whilst Fernando was supposed to use the time to “fix his attitude” and “re-evaluate his priorities”. It was a rather difficult thing to do: work on himself, being alone with only himself when it was himself that he seemed to fear the most lately. Between Sergio and José, between José and Olalla... He was a mess and he wanted to avoid the mess for as long as possible.

Fernando checked his watch and flipped on the television, searching through his sports channels before he found the one bearing the picture of an all-white stadium. He had watched Chelsea draw the day before with Sergio offering live commentary within the chat window of his computer’s Skype application and had promised him that he’d watch his last game of the season before he left for… So there he was, sitting on his sofa with his jaw ajar as he was transfixed by the display of ivory; the same hot and cold fanbase, the same fans that would jeer their legends coming together for once in honor of one man. He didn’t see anything other than white on his screen, white with a black seven: some were wearing one of Cristiano’s official home jerseys, some were sporting the number seven of some other Real Madrid legend, and there were those that had simply drawn the number seven against a plain white shirt… but no one seemed any different than they other, all there with the same thoughts shedding the same tears for the same man.

He felt his breathing hitch for moment; he had never seen such unity which, in itself, spoke measures and meant more than anything as he was referring to Spanish fans, unforgiving Madridistas. When he was eighteen years of age he had bore witness to the Korean white noise of the 2002 World Cup and was certain he’d never witness such a display of unity ever again. He sat there breathless, wronged in his thinking as he drank in every detail of the unforgettable image on his screen, his country, his people presenting such solidarity for their late legend of the game.

...and in those ninety minutes, as he watched a team of seven’s come charging out of the tunnels, he was with them all, felt connected to every single person within the stadium. He was home.

* * *

> I’ve never wanted to die, have never fantasized nor romanticized about the end of all things for me ...but lately, lately I haven’t wanted to live either. I’m simply existing and I don’t know, I don’t know what it’s supposed to mean or it's supposed to mean anything at all. I am being told to take each day as it comes and I am, I truly am... I just don’t know what I’m supposed to with them. Over these past few days, I had found a comfort in living within myself but even then, even then I find myself surrounded by what may or may not be lies. What may or may not be delusions… Lost and uncertain both here and there.
> 
> I’m flirting with the line, drowning in the grays, somewhere in between the question “why did you have to leave me” and the knowledge that “you [had] never left me”. Back and forth, from one thought to the next, from one extreme to the next… Common sense would dictate that I find the middle ground but what is common and what is sense anymore? Everywhere I look I see differences, everywhere I look everything seems to be so senseless, senseless, senseless… Why do we keep playing this game, this life when we all know it will all be for naught. I’ve never wanted to die, have never fantasized nor romanticized about the end of all things for me ...but lately, lately I haven’t wanted to live either.
> 
> It’s begun. This, this thing that I’ve come here for. They’ve started pouring these toxic chemicals into me, have started changing me and have started prodding at me in attempts to bleed out my confessions, in attempts to have me confess truths that are clearly not my own… I’m not concerned with me though. I have never been concerned with me and I had never agreed to come here for me. No. No, I’m here for you. It’s always been about you.

Iker sighed and shoved the book away from him, his eyes straining to find the words of his latest entry against the typed text of the book he had written it in; it had been one of the books Sergio had brought but he knew Sergio well enough to know that he wouldn’t get past the first two pages of Les Misérables before tossing the book aside and his own, personal “fuck it” had been triggered after that point.

He sighed after a few moments and glanced over at where his journal was resting at the foot of the bed and thought hard about reopening it again. About an hour after Ricky had come and gone, he had allowed himself to slip off into a light slumber and had awakened about thirty minutes after; he had found his once closed journal lying open, a once blank page with scribbles in that same, unmistakable handwriting. His first thought was to burn the book or to find another way to permanently destroy it as he wasn’t necessarily allowed to play with fire in his given environment… but then he realized that his nursing staff would have thought that he had lost his mind if he started tearing it to shreds and he certainly didn’t want a “relapse” in his charts. Damned either way, he settled with glaring at the book until he could work up the courage to finally read whatever had been scribbled into it.

(One more time), he dared himself as he timidly reached forward and held the book within his hands. (You can do this. They’re just words. Words, words, words. Little nothing, nothing, nothings). He tried to play down the sudden, overwhelming feeling of fear that built within him, tried to think nothing of the trembling in his hands as he held the book up in front of his eyes but was failing miserably.

** V (14OCT13): **

> It’s different here and unlike anything that I had ever expected, it’s so… quiet in a sense. There’s no chatter, no worries of a problem as there are no problems. There are just people here, people being themselves without feeling flawed, without feeling as if they are under a microscope of sorts. It’s eerie in a way; no groans of discontent just a need for you to see through their own rose coloured lenses, no cries in pain because they don’t hurt. No, no not here. I find the silence eerie, yes, but it can be soothing at times, calming. I’ve never heard silence, true silence before.
> 
> The people here, though I am uncertain if I should refer to them in such a way as they don’t bear the insecurity nor the hesitation so often found within people, they draw a stark contrast to any of the ones I had ever encountered before. They seem to be floating around this realm searching for something or perhaps, perhaps they are searching for someone. Purposeful in their presence but never rushed it seems, never rushed to leave, just happy to be here where they are understood.
> 
> I don’t, I don’t think that I’m meant to be here though. Something about this, about them seems so different in relation to me. As if my time here will be much shorter than theirs, as if my purpose here is so much different than theirs. No, I think I’m just waiting here. For someone. I’m just waiting until I can see him again and the wait time, yes that, I think the wait time depends solely on me.

He stared at the words on the page and felt a familiar warmth, a familiar hand resting firmly against his chest, a familiar pressure pressing into his back as his whole body seemed to fall at ease beneath the contact. He felt his body rising and falling with the other body, rising and falling with each inhale the other body took, each exhale the other body released. He felt breath, warm breath dancing on his neck as words danced across the surface of his skin and into his ear. “I miss you.”

Iker was suddenly very aware of each of his heart beats, the feeling of his own blood flowing beneath the surface of his skin, but that voice, Cristiano’s voice crept through and into the very core of who he was. He sighed softly as allowed his head to fall back against the other body and allowed himself to drown in the familiar scent of the other man. “I can’t believe… I can’t… You’re here.” It wasn’t a question as he couldn’t bear the disappointment of an answer knowing that whatever this was, this would be fleeting.

“...and where else would I be?” The other man whispered softly, distantly as he threaded his fingers through the dark locks of the keeper. “You need me right now. More than ever… You’re hurt and you’re hurt because of me. I, I did this to you but I’m going to do everything, everything within my power to see you out of this mess that I have created.”

Iker turned his head to the side as the words found him and grazed the stubble beneath his cheekbones against a nose, a full set of lips… He reached back and threaded his own fingers through thick hair and lost himself in the familiarity of it all. “Why did you leave me? Why did you, why did you do this to me?”

“I didn’t mean to do this to you. I never meant for any of this to happen and I… I just lost control of the situation, of myself and I couldn’t, I couldn’t take it anymore. I never meant for this… I just needed to find…”

Iker turned his head a bit further, tilted it to the side and gently placed his lips over those of the other man, quickly silencing him and every reason for leaving he was giving him. “I don’t need, I don’t really need words right now. I just need for you to be here, with me. I just need to feel that you’re here, with me. Just, just hold me. Please. Just for the night.” Iker closed the small gap between himself and the other, passionately kissing the lips of the other man as he desperately ran his fingers over the body he had once been so desperate to rejoin.

\---

He had stopped by Iker and Sergio’s room to simply check in on things but he had been beyond disappointed with what he had found so he had lingered in doorway; the last time Sergio had shared a moment of “intimacy” with a person before telling that same person that he had wrecked his life, well… It had broken a man enough to move him to take his own life.

(I have to find a way to distract him. I have to keep him from hurting Iker any further). He looked for something to throw at them, something to catch their attention without drawing attention to himself but had to settle for the massive medical alert button on the wall. (Fuck that’s drastic but if Sergio manages to tell him, it will definitely be necessary) ...and the room flashed blue.

\---

Iker’s eyes flew open as the sounds of the sirens going mad filled the otherwise silent air of the room and pulled his mind out of the blurs of his psychosis. He didn’t focus on the noise for long as he soon caught sight of light brown hair and caramel skin in the place of the once-winger he could have sworn he was with only moments before. Confusion flashed against his features with a hint of rage as he searched the room for the other body but he failed in finding it. “What the, what the fuck, Sergio,” he mumbled out as he double checked the area and then triple checked it. “Where is Cristiano, huh? Where did he go?” Iker started tossing the pillows off of the bed, wildly searching for the other man beneath the sheets of the bed and even within his own bags as if Cristiano could have somehow managed to hide himself in them. He even tried to lift his bed with Sergio on it despite the fact that it had been anchored to the floor and to the wall.

The shock of Iker’s antics had already worn off by the time Sergio worked up a response. To sit there and to witness the consequences his actions had held over Iker for the first time, seeing how much he had affected Iker through Cristiano rendered him speechless. He caught the keeper’s eyes in the midst of the outburst and saw him for the first time since Cris’ passing, saw the battered man beneath the strong yet crumbling exterior desperately clinging to something that never truly was. “I took him. I, uh, I made him leave.”

“What, what do you mean you made him leave?” Iker whispered out, calming himself as he sat back down on the bed and looked deeply into the eyes of the Sevillan. “He was just here… He was with me and we, we were happy.”

The medical staff had already pushed Mesut to the side and had entered the room, silently trying to assess the situation as they quieted the alarm. Some left to tend to the pandemonium that had ensued as a result of the triggered alarm but three had lingered as Iker’s words found them.  

Sergio hadn’t noticed the presence of anyone beyond Iker, couldn’t because of what was happening to the man that was supposed to have been his closest friend… What he had done to him was unforgivable. “I know, Iker. I know but…”

“I could of sworn, I know it, Sergio.” Iker was almost pleading with the other man, searching for any form of validation but he could only seem to find pity in the other man’s eyes. “I know he was here, Sergio. What could you, what could you have possibly said to run him off without him having said goodbye?” He would never…”

“I’m sure he said goodbye but perhaps, perhaps you were in too much denial to have heard it,” a calm quiet voice offered. “What matters, what’s real is that he isn’t here… He isn’t with us any longer and I know that it’s difficult to grasp, difficult to understand.”

Both the defender and the keeper snapped their heads over to where the voice had come from, both suddenly and painfully aware of the presence of their newest guests. The alarm had stopped but the two of them had been too caught up on the words of the other to have noticed the ceasing of the other sounds. They didn’t know how long the three of them had been standing there but their presence within itself all but assured the two men that the ward’s security detail were en route. David, the ward’s lead nurse, assured the two guards arriving that Iker would likely come peacefully should his extraction become required but requested that they hung around nearby just in case.

“It’s not, it’s not what it looks like,” Sergio tried as he managed catch David’s attention. He didn’t want to watch Iker get carted away for something he had done to him, couldn’t watch. “We were, we were just talking about the circumstances that had surrounded Cristiano’s death. You know, closure? That kind of thing. I know what it looks like and I’m sure there’s some kind of protocol you guys have to follow but it’s not, it’s not what it looks like. I swear it.”

David smiled and nodded his head at the other two, dismissing them as he assured them that he’d handle it. “Just tone it down next time, alright? We can’t have you guys throwing stuff near these buttons and sending out false alarms on the ward on a regular basis. It makes me look bad.” He finished as he rolled his eyes, his attentions now falling to the shrills that had already broken out across the ward, bringing life to an otherwise dead floor. “They’re already at it and it’s only one in the morning. Looks like I’m in for a long night,” David chuckled out as he made his way out of the room and into the hall. “If you guys need anything, we’re right out here.”

Iker threw his eyes on the defender as soon as the door closed and he scoffed in disbelief. “You know that you and I weren’t talking about Cristiano’s death. He was here, Sergio. I just don’t, I just… Why didn’t you tell them that he was here? Do you know what they’re going to do, what they’re going to think of me? They already think that I’m crazy and now they’re going to think that I’m, that I’m insane. And, and they don’t have the right, Sergio, they don’t have the right to call me crazy. Why didn’t you just tell them that he was here?”

Iker’s raw anger had reduced him to tears and Sergio couldn’t stand seeing the man suffering in the manner that he was. They had gone through so much together - good times, bad times - and now this… He had done this and something, something deep inside told Sergio that this is where they died. This where he and Iker would part ways, where they came to an end. “I’m sorry Iker but, he wasn’t here. He never was because he, he never made it here.”

Iker shook his head rapidly, disbelieving the things that Sergio was telling him. “No, he was here. I know he was. I, uh, I kissed him and I know…”

Sergio simply shook his head in response and pointed to his own chest, his lips falling to form a frown as the tears threatened to overwhelm him.

“Then his voice. I know that I heard it, Sergio.” Iker pleaded with the Sevillan as he saw the other man slowly falling apart next to him. (Sergio, Sergio’s lying. He has to be).

Sergio drew his brows together as he tried to figure out what voice Iker was referring to. He hadn’t said anything to the other man before the alarms had gone off but he hadn’t heard anything either.

“I heard him, Sergio, I swear I did. Maybe, maybe you just weren’t listening or maybe you just didn’t know what you were looking for but I know what I saw, I know what I felt, and I know that I heard him, Sergio. I can still taste him in my mouth, Sergio, I can.” Iker collapsed onto Sergio’s cover-less mattress (as he had thrown all of the sheets to the floor) and groaned in frustration as he glanced up to where Sergio was sitting just over him. “Why would you tell me that he left if you didn’t seem him leave then?”

Sergio felt a knot forming at the back of his throat and he tried his best to swallow it down. It was time and he knew that it was time. There was no question of how he was to go about it, he was just going to tell him the truth. “I did see him leave, Iker. Just not today. I saw him leave on the day that he died...”

Iker shot back up in the bed and turned to the now tearful Sevillan with his eyes wide in disbelief. “What are you talking about, Sergio? What do you mean when you say that you saw him leave?”

“There was a reason why I took Cristiano’s death as hard as I did, Iker. There’s a reason why I had admitted myself just up the road for a couple of days... Iker, I am so sorry for what I have done to you, to him. I never meant… None of this was supposed to happen.”

Iker could barely make out what Sergio was saying through the shaking in his voice but Iker managed to get the gist of it and he didn’t like the unsettling feeling that was starting to overtake him. “What are you talking about, Sergio?”

“I stopped by to see Cristiano... I stopped by the day before they had discovered him in the locker room. He looked so happy and I...”

(I knew that he was happy. But he couldn’t have been if he…?)

“...then I told him why I had come by. I told him why I needed to talk to him, why I was there. Only I didn’t speak with him, not with my words anyways. I tried to make it better, Iker. I tried to kiss away all of the pain I had caused him but I, I only ended up hurting him more, Iker.” Sergio sniffled and did his best to wipe away his tears, well aware that he was beyond the point of no return now. “I watched him die in front of me, standing in the middle of his kitchen. And I didn’t do anything about it, I just watched him slowly succumb to the wounds that I had reopened so I could maliciously pour salt into them. I had only thought of myself, of lifting the burden off of my own chest, of clearing my own conscious and I hadn’t stopped to think of what it could do to him. I walked away from him, shattering him with the knowledge of what I had done to him but I did nothing, nothing to fix what I had shattered in him... I killed him, Iker.”

Iker stared wide eyed at the wall in front of him, trying to piece it all together, trying to connect the dots. “What do you mean, you killed him, Sergio?” Iker’s voice was soft as he found himself surrendering to his thoughts. “What, what was this knowledge, Sergio?”

“Do you remember how you ended up becoming so close to Cristiano? What brought you two together?” Sergio’s voice detached from his body as his mind ventured back to that day. He couldn’t help it; that memory - Cris, did that to him.

Iker couldn’t keep himself from stuttering as his thoughts raced everywhere, taking him back to that wretched red day in the locker room, in the showers. Had Sergio found out what had happened to Cristiano that night? Worse, had he known and protected whoever had done it? “I found him... He had been... Someone had...”

“Me." Sergio interjected with a disturbing calmness in his voice. "I brought the two of you together and then I took him away from you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also:   
> Proper Spelling: Sevillian // M'Lynn's Spelling: Sevillan // I like being wrong in that sense. It looks better. It's like my relationship with folded and feld.


	5. Cockroaches at the Circus

Bright lights dimmed casting shadows neither here nor there, darkness stretching out of the more prominent figures all at once as the atmosphere of the floor seemed to calm almost immediately. Bright lights gone but not all of them; no, a line of them had stayed on, shining, illuminating the path for the white tinted faces to march forward, faces made pale by illness and by the lack of sunlight alike. Their blackened eyebrows seen painted in preposterously high arches, bringing attention to the madness at play within their eyes, emphasized the cracked humanity captured, trapped within the confines of their souls. They, with their thick lines of red scribbled over their lips, as if the beings were freshly blood drunk, diamonds drawn over their eyes in the purest of whites as if to compensate for a darkness held within. They paraded before him, before them, insanity proudly on display for any and all to see, for the entertainment of her and him, for the entertainment of you, me. Those trademark red noses, made red by any number of things, hair stretching in every direction from out of their heads, as wild and as uninhibited as their minds must have been, in a world that was neither his nor yours - red and uninhibited, wild and crazed. Their outrageously large smiles, smiles drawn from parts of the mind that were never meant to have been touched, matched only by the ludicrous laughs that slipped out of them, demented and rooted in something seeming to be wicked in nature. Their insanity was on display and there he found himself, spectating as he becames consumed with both fear and infatuation alike. Insanity on display for any and all to see and yet it was they who seemed the most free.

Life’s contortionists shadowed the boisterous others, their mutters seeming to bend the truths of the reality that he had always known. Every word they ushered forth brought with them doubts and insecurities about your present - his present, your future - his future. Truths violently twisted into the fabrications of their imaginations ultimately resulted in nothing more than skewed paradigms and reservations and yet it was they that remained untouched. How they could bend verities in the way they did, to the extent they did was beyond him. How had they not snapped against their overwrought condition of deception and self-trickery? At what point is the lie no longer enough? Master manipulators. Perhaps there was no point as there were no lies; what is truth but one person's side of things? ...what is the truth when reality, the other side was neither his nor yours, was cast off in Oz as we stand in a world of black and white?

Little they were in comparison to what followed though, nothing they were in comparison to what would come next. The clowns and contortionists were not the most intriguing spectacles for him here, would never be. No, the ones that quietly followed the exaggerated natures of the admittedly eccentric were what drew him in. They were raw, no pretenses, no outrageous acts, no rises and falls of mania rather they drew a sharp contrast with the clowns with their calm and collected nature. They had to be that way as they walked fine lines, though to them they were just about walking as you and I, as him and those that preceded them. As they are not perfect, they often slipped, from one side or to the other… That’s what made them so interesting though. That they were so unaware of the line, the line between reality and fabrication, so used to pacing the constriction that they never even noticed when they slipped; sometimes the slip resulted in a fall into the embrace of a net, a net that ultimately led them back to the line because solid ground never seemed solid for long. The earth would fall beneath them eventually, they would leave you and I, him and them within a matter of time. They always did. That was their way, their life and they knew no other. They would be lost without that line, lost without the flirtation with the imagination...

His door opened and a nurse stood within its frame signaling for him to join the tightrope walkers; he didn’t voice his complaints as they were the most comfortable to be around though he certainly disagreed with having been categorized as one of them. He was grounded. Still he walked along side this, still he listened and watched in awe as some slipped as others smiled and seemed to be balancing themselves perfectly. His company didn’t speak unless they had slipped and even then, their voices never rose above a whisper. He shouldn’t be here, walking among them. He knew his reality from the fabrics of his imagination; just because the ‘ringmasters’ of this ‘circus’ didn't agree with it, it shouldn’t give them the right to place him within one of their collections. 

He sat in silence, listening as a contortionist spoke of his father, the "head" of some "intelligence agency" as he watched one of the clowns watch him until a nurse came in. A hand fell on his shoulder and a face appeared before his own; he was being pulled him from the day room and it was being expressed that he had a visitor. Iker sighed and stood up from his metal table with a sigh of relief, followed the nurse into one of the side rooms where they conducted the interviews and therapy sessions. “Sit right here and he’ll be right in,” the nurse whose shirt was named ‘Andre’ informed him as he took a seat. “Do you need anything, Iker?”

The Spaniard shook his head absently and thanked the man with a whisper before redirecting his attention to the ‘interesting’ table in front of him. It was in no way truly remarkable but he’d pretend to be intrigued if it meant either avoiding or getting rid of this man and his shirt, Andre. In truth, there was nothing wrong with the nurse (one would easily argue that he had the problem) and in any other situation he’d love to carry on light banter with the obvious fan, but that was just it: the nurse, with the shirt named Andre, was a fan witnessing one of his idols at his weakest moment and that imparted a certain sense of shame onto the keeper. It’s not that he was weak, he was stronger than this and he’d known it but he just wasn’t willing… It meant he’d have to force himself to let go of Cristiano and he just wasn’t ready for that.

Andres and the man man wearing him stepped aside as Xabi poked his head through the door, smiling with a box of fatty (and so not nutritionist approved) donuts held before him as some sort of offering. “Hey Iker. Figured you could use some company.” Xabi’s voice was soft and sincere, compassionate and filled with something that Iker had missed without ever realizing he had. The Basque had been sensitive enough not to ask him how he was (the answer was obvious) nor how things were going (another question bearing an obvious answer) and Iker wanted to hug him for that alone. “Donut, Andres?” Xabi offered the departing shirt though the nurse turned with it.

The man beamed as if he had just heard that he had won the lottery and turned back into the room. He ran a hand nervously along the back of his neck and his cheeks flushed to a soft pink. “I would love one, Xabi. Thank you!”

Xabi simply smiled and nodded courteously as the man took his sinful circle and departed with a few more words of graciousness. As the door closed and as a few more seconds were removed from the present and future, added to the past, Xabi decided that it was as good of a time as any to warn Iker of what was going on in the ‘real’ world outside of Iker’s slice of hell. “They’re scaring us, you know? Somebody from here called Liza to inform her that your mental health is "declining". They didn't... Don’t worry about it too much though, okay? You just focus on getting to where you need to be or as far as you can go without leaving us. She said she's not going to inform the club of it, she just told me and sent me to check on you. To see what happened with you.”

(Oh, Xabi. Always so honest…) “Honestly," Iker drawled out, his voice breaking, the sound of it so unfamiliar and foreign to his ears, "I think I’m perfectly fine but apparently these people,” Iker twirled his index finger around in a circle, pointing from one of the four walls to the next, “have a problem with my thinking.”

Xabi chuckled at Iker’s mockery of the nursing staff, at least he was in good spirits, but quickly drew up a solemn expression as he recalled the details of his being here, of the alert from the institution to the club. “If you’re fine then why did you try to kill Sergio?” Xabi shuddered as his words came out blunt but he could think of other way to ask, no other way of saying it. “Actually, if I recall correctly, you had succeeded for two minutes until the emergency responders brought him back. I mean, no offense but of you weren't considered 'insane' you would be tried for murder, Iker... Mur-" he couldn't say the word again, it seemed too large to come out of his mouth and his throat seemed to close around it, "or even attempted mur- at the very least...”

“Insane?" Iker scoffed as he thought of the word. What would a sane person do then? Try to discuss it? Attempt to sit in front of the man responsible for everything - the deterioration of Cris, the deterioration of Iker, the club - and work things out? "Please, any sane person would’ve done what I did, what I tried to do, Xabi.” Iker’s voice was firm and his face mirrored his tone. “You have to understand that. You have to...” “Iker, you knocked him pretty hard in the face, bent him over the bed rail and tried to strangle the man with your sheets while pinning his wrists down to the bed with your knees…” Xabi shook his head as he tried to fully accept the image. It was all still unfathomable to him. “What is there to understand?”

Iker placed his head in between the palms of his hands and rested his elbows on the table top. “Maybe you should talk to Sergio, Xabi. He understands.”

The Basque sighed as he tried to fit in that piece of the puzzle, tried to figure out what Sergio had to do with anything. According to Liza, the institution had indicated that Sergio had been pretty adamant in stating that he had provoked Iker when he had been resuscitated. Hell, he had even wanted to speak to the keeper. Even Liza had seemed to sympathize with Iker and believe Sergio’s pleas fully... Hell, she was the reason Iker only had to be on the fifteenth floor with the ‘severely ill’ rather than on the twelfth floor with post trauma and rehabilitation patients for a mere three days; he’d be back in with Sergio by tomorrow evening. “I intend to. I just need to make sure that it doesn’t happen again, Iker.”

Iker scoffed as he stood up from the table, “I’ve already killed him what more can I do to him. He's like a fucking cockroach anyway and I...” he trailed as he caught sight of the midfielders provoked expression and shook his head dismissively. He took a few moments before deciding that it was within both of their better interests for him to truthfully reassure the Basque of his lack of intent. “I promise nothing will happen between the two of us. I can’t even…” Iker shook his head again and threaded his fingers through his hair as he attempted to give his thoughts words. Failing, he settled for a vow. “I promise, Xabi. On your children’s lives.”

“How about you promise on my life in the event that you’re being deceptive? I don't think that I can live with...”

“Deal.”  

* * *

Sergio sighed as he made out the blurred figure of Xabi standing within the confines of his room. Everything around the figure was bright, too bright, and existence in general seemed dreamlike and horrifyingly foreign all of a sudden. The air felt too heavy, the lights: too bright, his skin: too tight... Not to mention that dull, aching feeling that seemed to wrap around his neck, the way it seemed to catch fire any time he or one of the doctors would touch it. He had spoken with the Basque the day before and Xabi had made him aware of his impending visit then though it hadn’t kept him from forgetting, he had other things to remember... He hadn’t prepared himself for any of this; he knew Xabi would be here demanding answers, answers that Sergio had vowed to never give to anyone else. He had been warned…

“I hear you’re like a fucking cockroach.”

“Not so much, I can be killed you just have to find the right way,” Sergio laughed over towards the Basque though there was nothing jovial about the nature of either of the two Spaniards. It was as empty as he was, joy just as lost as Xabi seemed to be. “I know why you’re here and I can’t, I can't tell you, Xabi," he stated rather firmly despite the lack of volume within his voice. His throat hurt enough without any kind of strain and he didn't want to make it worse by speaking of something he had never been meant to speak of in the first place. "Cristiano didn’t want me to tell anyone but I told, I told Liza and now I’m here. I told Iker and then I died. And then…” Sergio stopped right there because Xabi, Xabi wouldn’t understand but Iker would. Iker would if he could get him to listen. “I just can’t, Xabi.”

“Just tell me why you deserved what Iker gave you. That’s all I need to know. Tell me that Iker didn’t lose his mind and I swear, I swear I’ll leave you alone. I just, I need this Sergio. I need this for me.”

“Iker didn’t, he didn't lose his mind, Xabi. If anything he found a bit of a spark that I could’ve sworn he’d lost for good. I mean, he was so passionate about wanting me gone and he decided a little too late that I didn’t deserve to die… He was right, I didn’t, I didn't deserve to be th…” Sergio stopped himself with the incessant reminder that Xabi wouldn’t understand ringing through his head. “I took something from him, Xabi. Something important, irreplaceable, and I shattered it. I can't... I shouldn't say any more. Can you accept that, Xabi? For me?”

Xabi nodded and placed a reassuring hand on Sergio’s shoulder. “At least you told him you broke it here, huh?” After giving the physically battered Sevillan a once over, Xabi dismissed himself to see everyone else while he was there. He knew Mes was here for Sergio but the crazy seemed to be contagious as he had found his first two friends in worse dispositions than they had left in and Mesut was... He was Mesut. “You know I’m feeling a little left out, maybe I should go crazy,” he laughed as he reached the doorway.

“What are you going to do, Xabi? Park in a no parking zone? I can see the headlines now "Breaking: Xabi Alonso Has Lost His Mind!” Sergio sarcastically reported while playfully wiggling his fingers in the air. Xabi was too much of a goody two-shoes.

“Nah, we play Barcelona soon. Maybe I’ll just score an own goal…”

“Yeah, that will definitely put you here, buddy.” Sergio called out as Xabi laughingly made his way towards Kaka or Mesut’s room with the escort that had been waiting on him just outside of the door.

Sergio sighed and reached into his drawer to pull out a fresh sheet of paper. He had to talk to Iker but knew there was no way the older Spaniard would come anywhere near him, would be allowed anywhere near him for a time. He knew he could get Mesut to deliver a letter to him though, perhaps even talk to him a bit… Sighing, Sergio pressed his ink pen to the blank page, watching as the page transformed between his eyes:

> Iker,
> 
>   
>  I am truly sorry for all of the pain I have caused you and I realize that nothing I can say will ever undo the past. I know that "I'm sorry" is nothing but an empty phrase, one that requires action and even then... Regardless, I have taken something from you that was never mine to touch, let alone take. If I had known the consequences of my actions, if I had known I’d drive Cristiano to suicide, and that you would’ve followed suite… then I like to think that I would’ve gotten into my car and just left. But I didn’t and now… Now I keep…
> 
>   
>  That’s not why I need to speak to you though. I have a message for you but I just can’t… I can’t put it into writing. He told me to tell you something to let you know it was him, something along the lines of you needing to celebrate your life and that we all have shit we have go through if we’re going anywhere worth being. Something about the beach we were on and something about how you need to figure out who the hell you are before you... Something. It was strange but he seemed to know Cris…


End file.
